Toddlers are explorers, and they learn by doing. Play gives your children immense opportunity to develop and practice new skills at their pace by following unique interests. The toys and playsets they already have shaped their development in many ways. It may seem that playing the right 3-year-old games is easy, but the moment you walk into a toy store, it gets overwhelming.

There is a vast array of toys developed for the toddlers in the market today. How do you choose which is right for kids? How do you know which are high quality and which will last? Which will keep them engrossed and for how long? Following are some ideas for selecting the toys that will grow with them, challenge, and nurture their overall development:

Used in varied ways
Toddlers love ripping apart, placing them back, pulling in, adding on, and building up. Toys for 5-year-olds should be open-ended. This means it should allow them to play different games on it. For instance, wooden blocks or chunky plastic interlocking blocks are ideal for making a road, zoo, bridge, or spaceship. Such games should spark their imagination and develop in them problem-solving and logical thinking skills.

Grow with them
As parents, we have experienced buying toys for kids they have played with for only two days and never touched them again. You can in such scenarios look for toys which can be fun at different developmental stages. For instance, small plastic animals are fun for toddlers, which gets used as shoebox house, which the 5-year-old games with same items include narrating a story, more like pretend play.

Encourages exploration and problem-solving
The right toys for this age allow children to practice new skills over and over. Toys that offer kids a chance to figure out something of their own, boost their logical thinking and become instant problem solvers. This also helps kids develop their spatial relations skills, hand-eye coordination, and motor skills.

Sparks their imagination
When your child is 3 years old, their creativity takes off as they can take over someone else’s role and imagine that something is something else. The 3-year-old games should be such which the kids can use for developing stories. Pretend play builds their language and literacy skills, problem-solving skills, and the ability to sequence.

Chance to play with real toys
At this stage, toddlers are good at figuring out how the objects in their world work such as television remotes, switch box, etc. They also want to play with real items such as smartphones, because they want to become big and capable. Such toys help them become problem-solvers, learn spatial skills, and develop fine motor skills.