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Who is a 2 year old boy?
He is mostly physically independent: walks, runs, kicks a ball, climbs up and down without help. He starts to talk in words and short sentences, follows simple instructions, points to familiar people, body parts and objects in books. Finally, a simple pretend play begins.
What are the best toys for two year old boys?
- Toys that encourage physical activity must the number one choice for every toddler. Balance bikes, tricycles, monkey bars are the best for the child’s physical development, sensory integration processing and healthy brain development. These toys have the most significant impact on your toddler’s cognitive skills.
- Toys that build emotional-volitional control, healthy self-esteem and self-confidence include toys and props that rise your 2-year-old’s independence in self-care, snack preparation, housework etc.
- Brain-developing toys and games require your active participation, but they boost your 2-year-old’s cognitive skills and are essential in building early pre-writing and pre-math skills.
- Board games teach toddlers social skills, cooperation and teamwork. They are fantastic for socialization, fun family evenings, bonding with your toddler, play dates, etc.
- Pretend-play toys can be a sanity-saver for you in future. Because a 2-year-old just starts exploring the pretend play, it will require some time and efforts from you to teach him how to play with these toys. Offer him several play scenarios, set invitations to play and encourage as much pretend play as possible throughout the day. You will thank yourself later when your child becomes competent in pretend play and will be able to stay in the play flow for a long time (depending on the temperament even up to 2 hours).
- Open-ended toys foster imagination and creativity, especially when your child is independent enough in pretend play. These toys offer endless play possibilities and grow with your child.
- Arts and crafts are perfect for the cold season when you need to keep your 2-year-old occupied longer. Offering various tools to your young artist like finger paints, crayons, face paints, glue, stickers, modelling clay will spark his creative interest and enrich his sensory experience.
In the list below, you will find detailed information about each type of toys. Also, you will find links to particular products on Amazon that we carefully chose for your convenience.
1. Toys to encourage physical activity in your 2 year old
Why is physical activity essential for 2-year-olds?
Gross motor skills are essential for the proper formation of inter hemispheric connections, coordination of movement, spatial body awareness and creation of the body map. For example, higher cognitive skills like writing or reading require an understanding of directions like left, right, up and down. Well-developed balance skills play a crucial role in the formation of body awareness in space and sense of direction. That is why early pre-math and pre-writing skills develop together with the improvement of balancing abilities of the child and the feel of gravitational security.
Moreover, when a child learns to write, he should hold his body in an upright position, and his arm and shoulders are relaxed so that he doesn’t get tired from the process of writing. If the child has a week core, muscles of the spine and neck, he is not able to effectively focus on the process of writing due to fatigue. That is why proper physical development of the body at early years has such an enormous impact on further learning at school. Moreover, adequate body map formation enables a child to feel his body in space and have better overall spatial awareness.
Such awareness is not only beneficial and essential for further math and geometry understanding, but also it develops the simultaneous way of the information processing and organization. With proper body map and spatial body awareness child quickly develops skills in maps, charts and graphs reading, understands geometry and geography at school and has a better sense of direction both in space and on a worksheet.
Toys to improve balance
Toys to improve hand-eye coordination
2. Toys to build independence and self-control
Why are they important?
These are not toys but real tools made in a convenient size for children. These tools are widely used in Montessori education for toddlers between ages 1.5-3 years to improve their self-care skills, independence, gross and fine motor skills, coordination of movements, hand-eye coordination. When a child becomes independent in his everyday activities and needs, his self-esteem, focus, self-control significantly improves even at the age of 18 months. The emotional-volitional development that boosts through these activities is a basis for the positive behavior and independent play through the whole childhood. Using these tools will require your persistence at the beginning, but when your 2-year-old learned the routine, your life will become much more comfortable and relaxed, especially if you have a baby as well.
Tools to learn food preparation and table setting
Toys to learn housekeeping
3. Educational toys for 2 year old boy
How can I stimulate my 2 year old's brain?
All educational games in our list improve child’s fine motor skills, thinking, attention, spatial awareness and many more cognitive skills. All these abilities are crucial for the further development of good writing, reading and math skills at school. Educational games are perfect for homeschooling, when learning comes in the way of play and the child doesn’t realize the learning process itself. These activities should always be carried out with the adult and under his supervision, as many of them contain small parts that are a choking hazard.
How to play?
For the most effective result take 15 minutes a day to play educational games with your 2-year old. If you play longer, the child may get too tired and frustrated and will not want to continue next time. With small children, it is always better to do fewer activities but keep their interest and enthusiasm for the next day. Also, because the attention span of 2-year-olds is rather short, do not expect your child to play one single game during the whole 15 min period. Rather have more games planned for this day and do one-two tasks for each game, checking if your child still shows enough concentration and interest for it.
If you are just starting, you might do ten different activities during these 15 minutes. After some time you’ll find that your child focuses on some task longer and the number of games will decrease. For example, with 3-year-old you might be playing only four games for 15 minutes, whereas with 4-year-old it is 2-3 games at a time.
What should a 2-year-old be learning?
The following list contains games and activities directed to the development of a particular set of skills, so it is better to have various games for various parts of the brain and cognitive skills. Whenever possible, we write the specific skill set that each type of activity improves.
Activities for fine motor skills, dexterity, hand-eye coordination
Balancing games are crucial for the development of hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, dexterity. That’s why every two years old should have at least one of them.
And the last one is the all-time classic that even two years old can handle after a little bit of training. Moreover, little kids can use it for open-ended building and block play.
Mushroom nails pegboard dramatically improves fine motor skills, sense of direction and attention span, which are all critical for future excellent writing skills.
How to play with a 2 year old?
At the beginning start with larger pegs. But be aware that your two-year-old will master the skill of putting pegs into holes very fast, then decrease the size of nails. Teach your child to make simple lines of pegs, always starting from left to right. When he can focus enough to finish the first line, ask him to do the same line below repeating the color order. This activity will promote your child‘s visual attention, copying skills and self-check for mistakes. Making the second line is difficult for little kids, so teach him to point on each peg in the first line, so he knows which one goes next in the second line.
Fishing game with hooks improves eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, dexterity.
When your child has mastered the skill of picking ducks, change the fishing string for longer one to make this game more challenging and to prolong its lifetime. Choose ducks rather than fishes because they are stable on the floor. But do not use them in water because the ducks and fishes will get moldy very fast. Moreover, the fishing poles are not water-resistant. Otherwise, this toy is beautiful and well made.
"Go Go Gelato" is an adorable game to promote dexterity, motor skills and logical thinking in a child. At the age of two, a child should learn just to pick up balls with cones without touching with hands. When he can pick a ball with cones and place a cone with a ball on the table, you can start with the simplest tasks that come with this game.
Lacing small beads is an important activity at the age of two. It develops concentration, perseverance, and fine motor skills in toddlers. There are many kits for bead lasing on the market. Still, a considerable part of them are too big and even appear on the market as jumbo beads for toddlers. Such jumbo beads do not provide a noticeable improvement of fine motor skills in two-year-olds because they are just too easy for them. Lacing activity should be done with small beads (around 0.5 inches) and always under adult supervision. If your child has never done any fine motor activities before, you could start with larger beads and when he mastered the skill, move to smaller ones.
Snap beads are great for finger strength, and fine motor skills snap beads are one of my favorites. Boys love them as much as girls because they are very bright, colorful and uniquely textured. Sometimes these beads might be hard to snap for a little child so should break and snap these beads several times before giving them to a child.
Lego Classic.
How to play with a 2-year-old?
Classic small Lego bricks are perfect for improving 2-year-old’s fine motor skills. When you ask the child to place small bricks on a plate base, he has to grab it with his pointing finger and a thumb, thus refining his pincer grasp. Using the simplest Lego instructions, you could teach your 2-year-old to build his first ever lego figures and buildings. This activity not only strengthens pincer grasp and fine motor skills but also teaches your child to follow instructions and self-check. Because of the high risk of choking hazard, never leave your 2-year-old with small Lego bricks unattended. If you teach your toddler to play with Lego now, by the age of 3, he should be able to follow instructions and create buildings on his own without any help from adults.
The snap and match puzzle ball is excellent to improve finger strength, color recognition skills and to relax your child after a tough day or on a road trip. It might go stiff at the beginning so an adult should play with it, before giving it to a 2-year-old.
Brainteasers for spatial insight, spatial reasoning, motor planning, logical thinking
"My First Totem" develops visual attention, spatial recognition, spatial reasoning, concepts of direction and self-check for mistakes. The cards with tasks are big enough for little kids and thoughtfully made from the simplest to more challenging.
"Day and Night" is a next-level game after your two-year-old can do at least some tasks from “My First Totem “. This game also promotes visual attention, perception and planning, spatial recognition and problem-solving skills. Always start with the “day“ tasks, asking first to do only one stick. Teach your child to begin with the left side of the picture and move to the right direction. And from the bottom to top.
"Bunny Peek a Boo" is a uniquely made game for toddlers, where tasks start perfectly from very easy to more challenging. This brainteaser teaches a child prepositions like on, under, in front, behind, etc. Moreover, the game develops spatial insight, planning, recognition and logical thinking. Bunny boo game is a real must-have for every toddler.
"Three Little Piggies" is a very engaging and adorable game that develops spatial insight, attention, visual perception, problem-solving skills in toddlers, which are prerequisites for future successful learning and understanding of math, geometry and logical concepts in school.
Games to develop visual attention, visual distribution, shape recognition
Lotto game helps your child to develop visual attention and its distribution. In the beginning, start with just one game board and only those cards that match this board. Later, to challenge your child, you could give him two game boards at once, then three, etc. When mastered, your two-year-old will be able to do the whole box of cards and game boards at once and even play for speed with you.
Larsen puzzles are eco-friendly and hand made in Norway. These puzzles has unique shapes that help little kids to find their mistakes and teach to pay attention to how pieces connect. At the age of 2, 15 to 30 pieces are appropriate, just consider your child’s developmental level.
Pattern blocks are useful for shape recognition, visual attention and are usually very engaging for the child.
Wooden Cylinder Socket Blocks are a classic Montessori toy. It teaches children visual discrimination and concepts of size and height, like high and low, short and long, big and small etc.
Books for speech development
Search and Find books are perfect for vocabulary and language development. Go through these books with your toddler daily. This activity extends his vocabulary, language skills, visual attention and its distribution, promotes creativity and logical thinking when he creates simple stories based on the pictures from the book.
4. Board games for 2 year olds
"My first orchard" teaches children to understand and follow the rules, cooperate with other people, recognize colors. As most of Haba products, the game is made of excellent materials and has decent quality.
Other adorable and engaging games by Djeco for 2-year- olds you will find below. All these games contain cute figures that keep children engaged for a long time and have easy-to-follow rules for a toddler. They promote social skills, teamwork and taking turns. Great for fun family time or play dates.
"The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel". Even though the age on the packaging says 3 years and up, this game would be too easy for most of the 3-year-olds and would be much more beneficial for children at 2 – 2.5 years old.
"Monkey Around" is a great game that teaches a child to recognize their body parts, feel and coordinate their body in space and many other important motor skills.
5. Pretend-play toys for 2 year olds
Which pretend-play toys are better for a 2-year old?
Realistically looking toys are better for this age because the brain of the 2-year-old is not ready for the fantasy and mature dramatic play yet. By providing your 2-year-old with realistic toys, you can help him to cope with every day social interactions, emotionally connect and help him to process various life experiences. Also, different play scenarios are an excellent opportunity to improve the language skills of your 2-year-old. Moreover, you can prepare your child to stressful situations like visiting a doctor or a dentist by playing out these events first.
Spend some time playing with your toddler, and later he will be able to create his own play scenarios and play independently freeing you a lot of time. If your child is mature enough in pretend play, around the age of three, he will be able to think of multiple uses of the same object and expand his play. At this moment a banana becomes a phone, or a cone turns into a microphone. The ability to create multiple applications for the same objects defines creativity in its core. And you can teach your toddler this skill as well.
If you want your 2-year-old to play with the kitchen longer, choose the one with lights and sounds, even if you love that adorable wooden kitchen of your dreams. Entertaining elements will help your child to engage in more focused pretend play. By playing together with your child, you may profoundly improve his language skills.
Toy vehicles:
Doctor’s set
6. Open-ended toys and loose parts
What are open-ended toys good for?
Open-ended play fosters children’s creativity, learning, social interaction. In this type of play, toys do not have any particular role or function and can be used in many play scenarios. The most popular open-ended toys are all kinds of bricks and blocks. For example, legos or classic wooden bricks make perfect open-ended toys, as they can be towers, forts, tunnels, buildings for animals at the zoo, barns, etc. According to Piaget’s developmental stages, children develop their creativity between ages three and seven.
Nevertheless, even at the age of two, children can play with open-ended toys. Still, their play at this age will be mostly operating with objects rather than creating play scenarios. That is why blocks are so much necessary at this age. If you engage in the open-ended play with your child, you may show him some play options, create an invitation to play and teach language and vocabulary. Remember that your child learns from interactions with other people and the most from the closest adults. With practice and growing up, the open-ended play will become more and more mature.
Loose parts? Is it even a toy?
Loose parts play is a crucial skill that every child should do starting at their two years old. It activates creativity when a child finds new ways to use everyday materials, divergent thinking and a process-oriented approach in the child’s brain. Loose parts provide numerous opportunities for sensory play, learning, and social engagement. Loose parts foster creative thinking, which is a distinctive feature of successful entrepreneurs, managers, and other leading professionals. Moreover, high creativity will be even more critical in the future job market with the upcoming era of AI. Play with loose parts should be carried out daily, where your toddler has free and uninterrupted time to discover and use these materials. With 2-year-olds, do not expect too much engagement or creativity at the beginning. Still, consistent loose parts exposure will promote their interest and ways to play.
Where can I get loose parts?
Many loose parts you already have at home or neighborhood. Look for pebbles, pine cones, twigs, rocks with the child in your backyard or the nearest park or forest. Children love playing with loose parts, which do not have to be expensive to become the most favorite toys in your house. Some manufacturers make excellent quality loose parts, e.g. Grapat that are sold online and offline in specialized shops and unfortunately are not available on Amazon. Many great Etsy shops sell hand made loose parts in a variety of shapes and colors. Also, big retailers like Michael’s or Dollar Tree often offer plenty of materials that you could use as loose parts. For example, unfinished wooden spools, peg dolls, wooden beads, colorful glass marbles, wooden sticks, felt sheets, etc. There are some decent products on Amazon that work well as loose parts. Just keep in mind that some loose parts are a choking hazard, so never leave your child playing with loose parts unattended.
7. Developing creativity through arts and crafts
Arts make a big part of sensory play that children seek in early childhood. Activities like painting, gluing, cutting with scissors refine motor skills their motor skills, provide rich sensory input and foster creativity in little kids. Easily accessible and quality art materials will spark your child’s urge to create. Moreover, painting and drawing on vertical surfaces, like easel, mirror or walls, is essential for training early pre-writing skills and arm strengthening.
If you read this post till the end, congratulations to your enthusiasm and interest on what is truly important for your 2-year-old boy. We want to clarify that you do not need all the toys from this list to make your child smart or happy. Even if you do not have any of these toys, you can still boost your toddler's development.
As a parent, you improve your child's intelligence significantly when you have a lot of conversations with him and encourage as much physical activity as possible in his everyday life. Especially it is crucial nowadays under shelter-in-place conditions. If you would like to dive deeper into your 2-year-old's healthy development, check out our recent post on the retained primitive reflexes in toddlers and their impact on children's emotional well-being!