If you are a parent looking for a new toy, you are probably looking for one that will both entertain and educate your child. While toys can be a great tool to keep your child busy, they are also critical to development.

According to the National Institutes of Health, playing with toys contributes to developing cognitive, motor, psychosocial, emotional, and linguistic skills.

If you’ve been searching for a toy specifically designed to help your child reach their milestones, a Montessori toy could be the answer.

Montessori toys are created specifically to encourage development for a particular age group. They support a child’s growth stage, such as learning independence, developing small motor skills, or recognizing shapes.

Children across the world experience similarly timed developmental milestones, and their toys should encourage skill development while also providing entertainment. Over the years, industry experts have learned what type of toys and play are most effective in teaching toddlers what they need to know.

While it may not seem like playing with toys will teach your child skills they’ll need for life, Montessori toys can do exactly that.

Not all Montessori toys are appropriate for all age groups. Some Montessori toys cater to infants, while others are intended for children aged five years or older. Here are some of the best learning toys for 1-year-olds:

Play sets are some of the best learning toys for 1-year-olds because of their versatility. High-quality play sets feature multiple educational activities that promote the development of critical skills like numerical reasoning, logic, and small motor skills.

Some play sets have as many as seven activities in one set, which gives your child reasons to keep coming back to play. While younger children can be stimulated by a single-use toy, 1-year-olds start to look for multiple things that can keep them engaged at once. This makes a multifunctional play set perfect for your learning toddler.

While most parents think of toy boxes as simply a place for the parents to store toys, Montessori toy boxes can be a great learning tool for 1-year-olds. Toddlers are learning to categorize and organize, and they are developing small motor skills. Learning toy boxes cater to all of these milestones.

Best of all, you can switch out components for the learning toy box so that it can be used as your child gets older and develops more advanced skills.

Focusing on your child’s brain development and small motor skills is important, but you can’t forget about the development of their large motor skills. A learning toy like a ladder board can encourage your child to climb, explore, and learn to navigate.

Encouraging play on a ladder board will also help your child learn their limits and build confidence. While they may not be able to navigate the ladder on day one, they’ll quickly learn how to maneuver and conquer the set.

One-year-olds love exploring new objects and often move from one thing to the next. That’s why a busy board is perfect for keeping your toddler busy while also presenting a variety of visual learning opportunities.

Busy boards can feature anything from shape matching and strings to clocks and moving components. You’ll find that sometimes your 1-year-old will focus on one task for a long time, and other times they’ll want to play with all of the components at once.

No matter how your toddler interacts with a busy board, they’ll be learning tactile and visual skills, along with perfecting their small motor skills.

There’s a reason shape blocks have been a staple in children’s toys for decades. Shape blocks are simple, but they teach your child more than it appears on the surface. When your child plays with shape objects, they are picking up on visual nuances that allow them to differentiate each object and match them.

Noticing these visual differences builds a foundation to later connect language to the objects. Blocks are safe and provide a wonderful opportunity for children to play with an adult, with another child, or independently.

Loop is the leader in high-quality toy rentals for children. When you Loop, you are renting the best toys for your child to both entertain them and teach them. You can enjoy them as long as you want, and we’ll pick them up when you’re done.

Get started with Loop by checking out our products for 1+ year olds today.