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18 Unique Educational Gifts to Share With Your Family & Friends

We are excited to bring you our favorite educational gifts thanks to our partnership with OSMO.  All opinions and photography are ours alone. #playOsmo

Christmas, birthdays and all the other celebrations in between mean gifts galore for our little ones.  

educational gifts

Toys help children explore the world around them by engaging their senses and inspiring their imagination.

They help kids learn to how to play. Playing with toys can help get the creative juices flowing with your littles. Really, we could go on and on about the benefits of having quality toys for your kids!

With that in mind, and as educators and moms, we decided to develop an educational gift guide for parents and gift givers to peruse when they were in need of a gift idea for a child.  

Or intention behind this guide is to introduce parents to toys that aid in a child’s cognitive development, which begins long before kiddos even know what toys are.  These toys engage children through their five senses as well as sensory and imaginative play.

Educational Gifts for Infants:

You might be thinking, a baby won’t ever remember these gifts. This is true. Save the engraved ornament or cute embroidered hat for something sentimental. Babies learn to recognize colors.  They learn patterns and become aware of the space around them.  These toys are safe, yet stimulating, which helps foster that development as they discover their senses.

This GREEN TOYS BABY STARTER SET is a great gift. These Green toys are made to last and are manufactured from recycled materials.  We love that! These Infantino SOFT BLOCKS set are easy to pack in your diaper bag or while traveling. All of our littles have loved the ZANY ZOO ACTIVITY CUBE! It’s durable and a toy kids love well into toddlerhood. Throw in this PLAYGRO STEM TOY in your shopping cart.  It’s great to keep babies entertained in their car seats!

Educational Gifts for Toddlers:

Toddlers may still enjoy may of the their toys from infancy, however they also need to begin playing with age appropriate toys as well.  Toddlers like to play with a variety of toys while they begin to develop their imagination.  While your kiddos pretend to cook in the kitchen they can use these COUNT & MATCH EGG set. They help your children learn colors, while improving their dexterity. This LeapFrog LEARN & GROOVE MUSICAL MAT will get those wiggles out while your kiddos count and dance with animal friends.  On the go?  Toss the BEST LEARNING LEARNING CUBE in your bag so your littles can learn the alphabet, numbers, colors, music, and animal sounds.

Sorting toys are great for toddlers, which is why we love these RAINBOW COUNTING BEARS with matching sorting cups that help develop fine motor skills as they count, sort and stack. We also like this GREEN TOYS SHAPE SORTER set to help toddlers learn to recognize shapes and colors.

Educational Gifts for Preschoolers:

Once your children reach preschool age they need to begin learning letters, numbers and develop their language skills.  Toys for preschools can be as simple as shape puzzles or fancy tech gadgets, but can help give kids a head start to the learning they will be doing in school.  The EMIDO BUILDING BLOCKS help children explore their wild imagination and develop teamwork skills while creating artistic structures!  Kids love creating imaginative mazes with the WELCOMY MARBLE RUNS TOY while they learn about physics and 3D thinking!  

The MELISSA & DOUG CATERPILLAR COUNTER promotes number sense and number recognition.  There are endless ways to play with this WOODEN SHAPE SORTER, which we love because kids begin to explore geometry, number sense and fractions in a fun way.  

Educational Gifts for 4 years +:

Giving children the opportunity to have fun while learning not only helps them to retain new information but helps them develop a positive attitude towards education as well.  While these toys are high-tech, they are some of our favorites.  We recently discovered OSMO and are totally in love with it.  OSMO is an award winning educational game system that turns your iPad and iPhone into a hands-on learning experience.  The OSMO GENIUS KIT comes with 5 games that turns math, spelling and visual thinking into engaging, educational fun.  The best part, each game adjusts as your child grows, making your investment in the OSMO system a valuable one.

educational gifts

OSMO has expanded it’s family of 10 interactive experiences, which include the CREATIVITY SET and CODING AWBIE and what some educators like to call “indoor recess”Osmo Hot Wheels MindRacers!  The Creativity Set houses NEWTON, MONSTER and MASTERPIECE, which all transform your children’s creativity into animated fun!

educational gifts

And finally, introduce coding to your child with OSMO’S CODING WITH AWBIE where they learn to code with patterns and sequences helping Awbie go on a magical adventure. For more coding fun, OSMO has also launched CODING JAM and recently OSMO CODING DUO!

educational gifts

A few other educational gifts that get the wheels spinning for our kids are the brain teasing KANOODLE puzzles.  Teach your kids about reasoning, problem solving and engineering with the GEARS! GEARS! GEARS! GIZMOS BUILDING SET!

The next time you need a gift for a holiday or birthday party, consider one of these awesome educational gifts that will make learning fun while your kiddos play!

What educational gift do you like to give?  Share with us in the comments below!

Don’t forget to pin this post so you’re not searching for educational gifts when you need them: