When you try to find the best Montessori toys for your 2-year-old toddler, you want to be sure of your choice since Montessori toys can be pretty pricey. These toys must be both exciting and beneficial for your child's brain. But how to choose from all the variety of Montessori toys available? Look no further if you're looking for the best Montessori toys for 2 year olds! In this blog post, we will discuss some of the best options on the market. Montessori toys are a great way to help your child learn and develop skills in a fun and interactive way. We will discuss what to look for when choosing Montessori toys and some of our favorite options. Let's get started!
Affiliate Disclosure: The Smart Parenting Guide is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we get commissions from qualifying purchases.
The Best Overall Montessori Toys For 2-Year-Olds
A child's brain at the age of 2 is predominantly in its movement stage of development, so the best Montessori toy would be the one that encourages a lot of movement activity in a child. (More on the stages of brain development read in our blog post "How To Raise Smart Kids?" )
At the same time, 2-year-olds crave independence, and that is what the Montessori approach encourages in kids in the first place. In our opinion, a Montessori bed meets both criteria, allowing children to independently move in and out of bed. Moreover, your 2-year-old will be thrilled and proud to have such a grown-up bed on his own. The bed gives children a quiet space, privacy when needed, and the sense of control they seek at this age.
The Best Affordable Montessori Toys
The Melissa and Dough Mop and Broom Set is a top pick for Montessori homes because it's both high-quality and good-looking. With all the different ways you can use this set and the numerous items included, this set is a great deal. This beautiful mop and broom set will help to stimulate your child's development through everyday chores. However, if you think this particular set is still too expensive, we recommend looking for alternative small cleaning tools that kids can use to help you around the house. We believe that the set of such child-sized tools is the best, most affordable Montessori toy ever due to the cognitive benefits it gives to children.
The Best Montessori Toys by The Skills They Promote
The Montessori curriculum covers several skills every child must master during their sensitive period. That is why Montessori toys can be divided into seven categories by the skill they teach: practical life, language, art and music, manipulative, movement, and conceptual thinking.
Practical life skills: care of the indoor environment, self-care, care for the outdoor environment, movement of objects, food preparation.
Language skills: vocabulary building, books, self-expression, rhythmical language.
Art and music: painting, sculpturing, scribbling, singing, exploring instruments, rhythm, and dance.
Manipulative skills: fine motor skills, visual discrimination, sensory.
Movement skills: balance and coordination.
Conceptual thinking skills: patterning by colors, types, shapes.
Stereognostic sense: exploring objects by touch without looking, e,g, blindfolded or behind their back.
Montessori Toys To Master Practical Life Skills
Montessori education strongly emphasizes food preparation, and for a good reason. Children love to cook, but these activities also help them develop essential life skills like fine motor control, independence, and self-awareness. Having child-sized utensils is, therefore, necessary in Montessori classrooms. However, your child will also love to have their kitchen tools at home!
Child-size kitchenware is one of the best investments you can make into your 2-year-old physical and cognitive development, except for your time and attention. The following tools are widely used in Montessori classrooms, and children love to use them. We are confident that your 2-year-old will appreciate these Montessori toys just as much as the thousands of other Montessori kids that have played with them for years.
Montessori Toys To Promote Language Skills In 2-Year-Olds
There are several ways in the Montessori curriculum to teach children vocabulary and language skills. Depending on the language skill level of your 2-year-old, you can opt-in for introducing small objects to teach your child the names or combine them with language cards to have kids match the object to the picture. But you will need many small objects to expand your kid's vocabulary. A more budget-friendly language-promoting toy for a typical 2-year-old would be a wimmelbuch or a picture book.
Children can learn to name objects, respond by pointing, ask questions, describe scenes, and even learn how things work! According to Montessori philosophy, picture books should have clear, better real-life pictures and bear real-life information meaning that animals shouldn't talk or kitchen tools walk in Montessori books. Moreover, an adult must participate in this language learning process, actively teaching vocabulary to the child through picture books.
Art and Music Montessori Toys For 2-Year-Olds
Despite the widespread opinion that the Montessori curriculum limits children's creativity and self-expression, art education is an integral part of the Montessori curriculum starting from an early age. In this category, we actually have two best toys for two-year-olds that are both important for the creative and cognitive development of little kids.
An easel for painting is an excellent multi-purpose toy for 2-year-olds! It helps them develop fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and visual discrimination. Moreover, it's a perfect way for children to express their emotions and explore different colors and textures.
We recommend getting an easel with a blackboard on one side and a whiteboard on the other. This way, your child can use chalk, dry-erase markers, and paint on the easel.
Another important toy that will last for ages in your home is a musical instrument. Children must learn to discriminate various verbal and non-verbal sounds and learn rhythms to build language skills properly. Playing musical instruments allows children to experiment with different sounds, improve their ability to focus, and stimulate their senses.
Montessori Toys To Promote The Manipulative Skills of a 2-Year-Old
Manipulative toys are the most widespread toys in Montessori classrooms. These toys include stringing beads, stacking puzzles, ball runs, sewing, twisting and screwing tools, shape sorters, manual trackers, etc. All these toys are highly beneficial for kids' cognitive and physical development, as they improve hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, visual discrimination skills, sensory awareness, etc. So, choosing from such a variety of toys the best and most beneficial for a 2-year-old toddler is not easy.
In our choice, we thought of one meta-skill that can influence several other skills and promote a toddler's cognitive development. Playing with which toy can simultaneously hone fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and visual discrimination?
Our answer is cutting! Tested and proven by many kids, scissors require the use of numerous abilities and patience to master. To ensure your 2-year-old develops these skills, buy them a small pair of metal scissors and the Kumon "Let's Cut Paper!" They'll learn how to cut in no time while also mastering fine motor skills.
Montessori Toy to Boost Movement Skills in 2-Year-Olds
A child under three must learn a lot of different movement patterns to build their gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
Maria Montessori was ahead of her time when she realized how important movement is for young children. The ability to move freely is at the core of the Montessori curriculum. There are always several kid-friendly props available in each classroom that encourage movement. For example, stepping stairs, balance board, climbing frame, etc. However, many movement skills children master outside during recess time.
The Montessori curriculum includes several outside activities with a ball that promote gross motor skills and hand-eye and leg-eye coordination, like kicking, rolling, and throwing a ball in different ways.
If you'd like to know more about the gross motor skills toddlers should master in their early years, we have a fantastic blog post with examples of games to play with your little one to hone those skills.
Considering the above, we believe that a set of child-sized balls of various weights and sizes is the most incredible Montessori toy for 2-year-olds that promotes movement and enhances motor skills and coordination. You can easily play indoors with softer balls; bigger and harder balls are great for outside time.
Montessori Toys for 2-Year-Olds To Improve Conceptual Thinking
This winner was tough to choose for us as there are plenty of Montessori toys that kids love and that teach valuable concepts of sizes, shapes, and colors. These toys range from simple blocks to magnetic tangrams and several amazing patterning toys.
We believe 3-dimensional thinking is a skill to foster from an early age. Children naturally understand the concept of height, depth, and size because they experience them in real life outside when stepping in a puddle, climbing on monkey bars, or sliding down a slide. Therefore, we can easily introduce these concepts for objects and promote kids' spatial thinking, a valuable pre-math skill.
So the best toys to promote conceptual thinking in 2-year-olds would be knobbed cylinders. They teach children various 3d concepts and help them learn to discriminate objects by height, depth, size, and width.
Knobbed cylinders are often used in the 3-6 Montessori classrooms. However, in our own experience, many 2-year-olds use this toy without problems if you give them a shortened version with fewer pieces.
Montessori Toy To Enrich The Stereognostic Sense
A mystery bag is one of the most loved toys in Montessori classrooms by many children. Kids love to guess what objects are inside the bag and examine them. Usually, a mystery bag includes small objects of different textures, like a metal key, an artificial gem, a flower, a pinecone, a button, etc. You can find similar objects around your house and change them regularly to keep the mystery fresh.
This activity promotes language and muscular and visual memory and boosts spatial awareness and understanding of real-world objects.
In a more advanced version, you can add objects that are somehow related to each other to the mystery bag. A child then not only can guess the object but also its relation to others. For example, the bag can contain different figures of farm animals, geometric shapes, nature treasures, silverware, small figures of musical instruments, etc.
The Best Montessori Gifts For 2-Year-Olds
Would you like to give your child a gift that fits into your Montessori home, is exciting for the kid and will last for ages?
We've got you covered.
Children aged two will love playing with a balance board, and it is an excellent way to get them physically active, which is vital for their development. The balance board will also play a role in kids' imaginative pretend-play later on, which is crucial for their creativity. Best of all, your 2-year-old won't get bored because there will always be something new to learn and explore with the balance board.
The Best Montessori Toys From IKEA
IKEA is a great place to find Montessori items. This brand understands the specifics of young brain development and offers quality educational tools that you can use in your Montessori home or classroom. In our opinion, the best IKEA item that aligns with the Montessori philosophy is the Strandmon armchair, a small copy of an adult chair. This furniture will fit perfectly in the reading corner and nurture independence and self-confidence in little kids because of its solid construction and imposing appearance. Many Montessori experts recommend another IKEA product for the reading corner, the Poeng armchair, a popular choice. However, we saw several times how children almost fell off this chair as they tend to get in it with their feet first leaning on its back and often almost tipping it over. We think the small Poeng chair is too unstable for little kids before they learn to sit correctly. But this chair would be great for children over 3.
Budget Montessori Toys For 2-Year-Olds
Our choice is not the cheapest Montessori toy, but it is a good buy. The geoboard is an excellent value for the number of challenges it provides kids, making it a wise investment in your Montessori curriculum. Pegboard may endure many years in your house, with the challenges increasing as your kid grows. For example, teaching a 2-year-old to put elastics on the pegboard in different directions with both hands will help them strengthen their interhemispheric connection and fine motor skills.
Also, pegboard is a fantastic tool to teach toddlers how to make basic shapes. Older children can then use a pegboard to create pictures, and this activity significantly enhances spatial reasoning and improves pre-writing and pre-mathematics abilities.
The pegboard we suggest is both safe and sturdy, so we can confidently advise it to our readers. If you don't have access to this specific one or you are looking for a cheaper option, ensure the pegs are securely attached to the board; they might be hazardous if they come free under elastics strain.
The Best Non-Montessori Educational Toys For 2-Year-Olds
Montessori toys are excellent tools to teach children valuable skills in a playful manner, and we love them with all our hearts. However, other fantastic educational toys on the market also facilitate kids learning, and kids love them!
The Best Brainteasers For 2-Year-Olds
We consider "My First Totem" the best brainteaser for 2-year-olds. The cards are big enough for a little child to follow the task, and the elements of this game are so adorable that kids love them from first sight. This brainteaser brings many cognitive benefits to a 2-year-old and is feasible enough for them to solve it. Completing the challenges from "My First Totem," kids improve their visual attention and spatial thinking skills without significant effort.
The Best Puzzles For 2-Year-Olds
Depending on a child's visual attention and discrimination abilities, most two-year-olds can do 10-30 piece puzzles. To help them along, we recommend choosing a puzzle with their favorite theme and helping them out at the beginning several times before they try to go it alone. First and foremost, it is crucial to choose puzzles with clear pictures where the differences between objects are visible. The puzzle we recommend has a Paw Patrol theme that most children love, clear pictures, and a magnetic base for easy storage. Even though it is not Montessori style, this puzzle is still a great educational tool for young kids.
Must-Have Open-Ended Toys For 2-Year-Olds
Building blocks, in our opinion, are the greatest open-ended toys for children of all ages. They help kids develop spatial awareness, visual discrimination, and other early math abilities. Children naturally pick building blocks for their games, but assisting them at the start is necessary to extend their fun.
Here we recommend natural building blocks by Melissa & Doug, as they are rich in shapes and have a decent quality. However, if you can find Grimm's colorful building blocks, we highly encourage you to buy them. Grimm's blocks feature bold, bright colors that grip kids' attention for longer and a textured surface that helps blocks stay stacked up without crumbling. In our experience, many other manufacturers use glossy paint on their bricks, making them slippery, which leads to breakdowns during construction.
Perfect Stem Toys For 2-Year-Olds
Kids are obsessed with water play and can spend hours playing in a bathtub with the waterpipes we recommend. This toy is fantastic for teaching children several STEM skills; they also learn the concept of directionality, cause and effect, and concentration. We couldn't recommend these bath pipes highly enough!
Are you interested in more ideas for learning toys for 2-year-olds? We have a fantastic blog post that guides you through the best toys for 2-year-old apart from the Montessori curriculum. We highly recommend checking it out! "The Complete Guide to the Best Toys for 2 Year Old Boys."