Toys and Activities for 18-24 Month Development

I think as a first time parent of a toddler, one of my biggest worries has been his development. Is he saying enough? Is he meeting developmental milestones? Am I doing enough to teach him? At least in my experience, most moms wonder these same things. They wonder if they’re doing enough, providing enough opportunities for growth, if their child is on track, etc. Because of these common concerns, I wanted to compile a list of toys and activities that we use at home to help my son learn. These are actually aligned with the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) that we fill out at each well-child checkup. This post in particular will be helpful for the 24 month checkup.

Ages and Stages Questionnaire

At each well-child check ups since from 12 months forward, we have filled out an ASQ. These are developmental screenings that check skill level in several different areas. What they look at is the following:

• Communication Skills
• Gross Motor Skills
• Fine Motor Skills
• Problem Solving Skills
• Personal-Social Skills

You can find a copy of the ASQ for each age group here. Now, some of the tasks these questionnaires ask your child to do can be very specific. This is one of my personal issues with the ASQs because I feel like kiddos can demonstrate the same skillset with different activities, but I digress. Either way, within this post, I’ll be sharing some of our favorite toys and activities to help kiddos reach these developmental milestones.

Toys and Activities to Promote Skill Building

1) Toy Cars and Other Vehicles

My son LOVES these little Chevron cars my mom got him for Christmas and this tractor he got from my sister. You could really use any large toy cars though! Another favorite of ours are the soft bodied Melissa and Doug pull back cars found here. Cars are great developmental toys for a few different reasons:

1. They’re easy to line up. One of the tasks of the Problem-Solving section of the ASQ is for your child to be able to line up four objects in a row after watching you do it.
2. They’re great for pretend play. One of the skills in the Personal-Social section of the ASQ as well as the M-CHAT autism screening deals with your child’s ability to play pretend. You can encourage your child do this by driving them around and making car noises. You’ll see other toys and activities to encourage this skill farther down too.
3. You can demonstrate steering around obstacles. Another skill in the Personal-Social section of the ASQ requires your child to be able to maneuver toys around obstacles or back them up when there isn’t room to turn.

2) Hand Puppets

Another toy that my son got for Christmas from my other sister is this set of farm animal hand puppets from Melissa and Doug. You can buy them here. Here are the different ways we use them to teach skills:

1. Pretend play with animal sounds.
2. Identify the different animals and sounds. This is great for developing communication and language skills! You can give choices between multiple animals and ask questions like “Which one is the cow?” Or, you can ask about a specific hand puppet and ask “What animal is this?” Or even “Which animal says ‘neigh?'” The ASQ communication skills section puts emphasis on 2 year olds being able to answer these types of questions, or at least gesture to the correct answer.
3. Something I haven’t tried yet but would be a great idea would be to print out real pictures of the live animals and match the puppet to the real animal. This would promote problem solving skills as well as communication skills.

3) Wooden Puzzles

We have a few different puzzles that our toddler really likes to play with. Our favorite is this thick, wooden dinosaur puzzle from Melissa and Doug found here. We also have this Mickey Mouse transportation sound puzzle. The Mickey puzzle has pegs on the pieces which are nice for fine motor developement. Lastly, for Valentine’s Day, we purchased a name puzzle from a small business on etsy. Here’s where we bought ours from. We’re excited for our kiddo to learn about his name since he’s really interested in letters and the alphabet right now.

Now, let me start off by saying that this is just personal preference. That being said, I find that the chunky, thick wooden puzzles are best for this stage since everything still goes in the mouth. The thinner puzzle pieces are less likely to hold up against chewing and saliva. Some of the Mickey Mouse puzzle pieces are missing some of the picture on them, haha. But these are the benefits that wooden puzzles have for development:

1. Puzzles with pegs really help to fine tune the pincer grasp, but really, all puzzles in general help to improve fine motor skills.
2. They also help to develop hand-eye coordination.
3. They definitely help develop problem-solving skills. One of the problem-solving skills on the ASQ for 24 months is putting items where they belong. Even if your toddler struggles to put the pieces in the right spot, even just showing that they know the pieces belong on the board of the puzzle means they’re developing this skill!

4) Play Kitchen

Our son’s big Christmas present last year was this awesome KidKraft play kitchen. This is one of his staples that he plays with every single day. We also got him a set of play food and play pots and pans. Here are the reasons we really like this toy:

1. It’s a great way to engage in pretend play. We can pretend to make pizza on the stove like we did in this picture below. One of our favorite things to do though is make water noises when kiddo plays with the sink, beeping sounds when something is “done,” or sizzling sounds when something is on the stove.
   • More on pretend play: one of the new skills we should be working on is using another toy as something else. Maybe this looks like using blocks as ice cubes in the toy freezer, or a toy carrot to stir.
2. It’s great for fine motor skills. The knobs and switches on the stovetop of the play kitchen are one way we work toward building fine motor skills. Using a twisting motion is actually one of the skills on the ASQ, as is flipping switches on and off.
3. It’s another way that we can practice putting things where they go. We try to pick up the pretend food when we’re done and put it in the fridge of the kitchen.
4. The play kitchen helps develop problem solving skills. Some of the doors he’s too short to reach, so he gets something to stand on to open them. Or, as is shown below, he’s trying to problem solve to get all of his pizza to stay on the stovetop.

5) Blocks

In our house we have two kinds of blocks, both wooden from Hape and these Mega Bloks that kiddo got for Christmas from grandma. Blocks are great for many different reasons. These are the types of activities we do with them:

1. Stacking and building. I’m sure this sounds like a no brainer! This is the most popular way we use blocks. This is because it’s one of the fine-motor skills that 2 year old kiddos should have. They should able to stack 7 small items on top of another.
2. Color recognition. We encourage communication skills by asking questions like “What color is this block?” or “Can you find a blue block?” We also promote color recognition by sorting the blocks into different piles by color.
3. We also work on counting with the Mega Bloks. Mega Bloks have large connecting nubs on top of them, so we will count nubs on the different pieces.
4. Practice putting toys away. Our son LOVES to help clean up his blocks by putting them back in the bag. The zippered bag they come with makes it really easy for him to identify where they go.

6) Shape Sorter

Our toddler has been really interested in learning about shapes and colors lately, so this toy has been perfect for teaching those concepts. In addition to communication skills, we also like to use this toy for:

1. Fine motor skill development. Twisting the blocks so the shapes fit in the correct spot helps with this skill. Turning the shape sorter around to find the correct slot also helps!
2. Problem solving skill development. Finding the correct spot for each shape, putting the shape in the slot itself, etc. are all ways kiddos can demonstrate problem solving skills.

7) Fine Motor Hedgehog (and Friends!)

One of the other gifts we bought for Christmas was this Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog toy. There are also other variations such as Steggy the Fine Motor Dinosaur or Max the Fine Motor Moose. These are all super cute toys that promote… you guessed it! Fine motor skills. These are the activities we do with ours:

1. Removing spikes using the pincer grasp.
2. Putting spikes back into the hedgehog. We aren’t quite there yet, but I try to help my son put them in the holes.
3. Counting the number of spikes which is great for communication.
4. Sorting the spikes by color.
5. Lining the spikes up in rows.

8) Flash Cards

Another favorite activity to help with communication skills are these touch-and-feel flash cards. Our son loves to feel each card, which has different textures. For example, the card for “jelly” has a sticky spot, or on the card for “tractor” the ridges of the wheels are raised. There are so many great activities you can do with these. The flash cards even give you ideas for questions to ask about each card on the back. One thing I like to do is hold up two cards and ask “which one is the ___?”

9) Magnadoodles, Drawing Tablets or Coloring Books

Our toddler has really started to become interested in scribbling lately. We really like this magnadoodle toy for this because it’s mess free and you can erase and start over. For 18-24 month kiddos though, it’s really important to put away the shape magnets until they’re older as they pose a choking hazard. We only use the pen and the board for right now.

Other toys that can promote drawing skills are drawing tablets like this one or coloring books. Coloring books are nice, especially now that Crayola has their mess free line. This is one we have on our son’s birthday list. These types of toys and activities are great for many reasons:

1. Communication skills. Now I know this may not be the first thing you think of, but you definitely can use coloring as a tool for developing communication skills!
   • I draw shapes on our magnadoodle and ask what they are.
   • You can also ask questions about the picture they drew or the colors they’re using.
   • You can also give directions like “Use the blue marker.” Being able to follow simple directions is one of the skills being assessed for the 24 month ASQ.
2. It’s great for fine motor skills in terms of being able to properly hold a pen, crayon, or marker and control the motions it makes.
3. The asq classifies being able to draw a single line without scribbling as being a problem solving skill that’s important to have at this age.

10) Exploring Your Home

One of the most important things you can do for your child to learn and grow is allow them to safely explore your home. One of the skill sets we haven’t touched on yet is gross motor skills, but this is where those skills as well as others come into play. Here are some great activities you can do just around your house:

1. Stair climbing. Being able to go up and down stairs is a large focus of the gross motor section of the ASQ.
2. Kicking a ball. Get outside and teach your kiddo to kick! Two questions of the gross motor skills section focus on the ability to kick a ball.
3. Flipping on/off light switches. This is one of the skills of the fine motor section of the ASQ.
4. Opening closed doors. Your child making a twisting motion with their hands like you would use to twist a doorknob is a fine motor skill that they’ll need to develop.
5. Following directions. Ask your child to go get a toy or a book from another room or to put their shoes away. These types of directions help develop communication skills.

Toys and Activities: In Summary

These 10 toys and activities above are all rooted in skill development and will help your kiddos learn and grow! Communication, fine motor, gross motor, problem-solving, and personal-social skills are all skillsets that your child will need to use throughout their entire life. It’s important that we can create a solid foundation for them through play and simple every-day actions. Let me know of other toys and activities that your family enjoys or other suggestions that you may have in the comments below. If you liked this post and want to see more of my family fun topics, please go to my parenting ideas page here or subscribe below! Thanks everyone for reading!