Natural Educational Toddler Toys That Make Great Gifts!

Young children will love this list of the best natural and eco-friendly toddler toys. This eco-conscious toy guide is filled with great gifts for toddlers. It includes Waldorf and Montessori educational toys for toddlers, making learning fun!

This list of toddler toys features some of the best natural educational toys for toddlers. Eco-friendly toddler toys made of wood and other sustainable materials provide many benefits to the developing child.

The eco-conscious toys on this list make great toddler gift ideas for Christmas or birthdays. Give your growing child the gift of a more sustainable future with the very best natural toddler toys! You might also enjoy learning about Natural Preschool Toys and How They Benefit Development.

Best Toddler Toys: Waldorf and Montessori Educational Toys for Toddlers

While my husband and I owned and operated a Waldorf-inspired childcare, we were determined to avoid conventional plastic toddler toys and electronic toys that made too much noise.

Instead, we looked for natural educational toys for toddlers that are made with organic, natural, or eco-friendly materials. As you can see, we found a plethora of sustainable green toys to choose from that met the many developmental needs of the toddlers in our home daycare.

Our family is particularly fond of natural Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia-inspired toys. Below is a list of the best natural wooden toddler toys available today![p” We hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Related: Best Tools for Raising Helpers

How do Natural Toddler Toys Benefit Development?

Toddler toys made with wood and other natural materials benefit the developing toddler in several ways.

Playing with natural toddler toys made with wood, wool, silk, and other natural materials provides a rich sensory experience for the developing child. This is why they are used in both Waldorf and Montessori Education.

Natural toys also provide a more open-ended play experience for the developing toddler. This can help young children develop their creativity and imagination. More details that describe how each type of toddler toy benefits development can be found in the toy descriptions below.

Click on the title of each toddler toy to learn more about it. If you click to purchase, Rhythms of Play will earn a small commission at no cost to you.

Must have educational toddler toys made of natural materials

Educational Toddler Toys: Games and Puzzles for Toddlers

Games are a great way to learn through play. Working with puzzles can help toddlers develop their hand-eye coordination, finger dexterity, concentration, spatial ability, and problem-solving skills.

Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles for Toddlers:

Hape Colorback Sea Turtle:

Use the wand (with a safe, breakaway cord) to guide each colored marble into the sea turtle’s matching section of the shell.
This quiet and wonderful travel toy builds coordination and concentration while reinforcing color recognition.
I keep this fun portable toddler toy in my car. It is fantastic for travel because the pieces are contained.
I’m amazed at how deeply my daughter can focus while playing with this toy.

Memory Matching Games for Toddlers:

Create your own matching games with these DIY Nature Memory Game instructions.
Or, try this wooden memory-matching game for toddlers.
- It consists of 32 matching wooden chips featuring different animals.
Test children’s memory and find the most animal pairs to win the game successfully. Great for 2-4 players.

Magnetic Pattern Blocks Set:

Pattern blocks like these from Melissa & Doug can help develop a toddler’s creativity, imagination, color recognition, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving skills.
This makes a fantastic travel toy for toddlers!

Hape Totally Amazing Roller Derby Wooden Marble Racing Toddler Toy:

Ready, set, race with the Roller Derby Track from Hape Toys!
Colorful wooden balls, peek-a-boo holes, and fast tracks create this best-selling, dual-sided mountain of fun.
Toddlers will love rolling the brightly colored balls down the tracks over and over again!

Best Musical Toys for Toddlers:

Studies show that music is beneficial for children’s cognitive development. Imagine a thick forest with no clear pathways through it; this is like a child’s developing brain. Now visualize the path being forged, neurologically, every time you musically interact with your child. The “music channel” is similar to the “language channel” in that it needs daily stimulation to grow and remain strong. You might also enjoy this Kids’ Music That Won’t Drive You Nuts!

Musical Instrument Set:

Introduce your toddler to the fun of music through playing their own instruments, perfectly sized for little hands to grasp and shake.
A good beginning musical instrument set for toddlers can include a tambourine, finger castanets, sleigh bells, a piccolo flute, wrist bells, maracas, a xylophone with wooden mallets, a musical triangle, a handbell, a shaker egg, and more.
They also often come with a handbag or tray that is ideal for storing the instruments.
Alternatively, musical instruments and shaker toys can be purchased separately.

High Quality Xylophone or Glockenspiel with Mallets:

A Glockenspiel with two wooden mallets and precision-tuned bars arranged in a C pentatonic scale produces pleasing sounds regardless of which notes are played.

Green Tones Hohner Spinning Drum:

Here’s a spinning drum by Green Toys, a lovely musical instrument for your toddler to start with.
It features a smooth wood handle shaped for small hands.

Eco-Friendly Planes, Trains, and Automobiles for Toddlers:

Here are several natural plane, train, and car toys for toddlers to enjoy:

First Vehicles Set with Wooden Car, Truck, and Airplane:

Just right for little hands, this set of three chunky hardwood vehicles, including a wooden car, truck, and airplane with easy-rolling wheels by Melissa & Doug, is excellent for early pretend play.

Green Toys Dump Truck:

This dump truck for toddlers by Green Toys may not be made of wood or other natural materials; however, it is made in the USA from 100% recycled plastic milk containers — woot!
This award-winning, eco-designed toy truck has no metal axles and a workable dumper that encourages motor skill development. The recycled plastic is very sturdy and will last a very long time.
We love that if it ever breaks beyond repair, it can be placed in the recycling bin instead of the garbage can! You may also like the Green Toys Fire Truck!

Wooden Airplane Toy for Toddlers:

An Eco-Friendly and handmade wooden toy airplane that is perfect for stimulating creative expression, fine motor, tactile, cognitive, and hand or eye development.
The easy-to-grasp design of these simple toys helps improve your child’s pincer grip, preparing them for writing.
Try either of the following options:
- Wooden airplane playset for toddlers
- Toddler Airplane made of recycled plastic

Switchback Racetrack:

This simple, natural toy for toddlers is a favorite in our home childcare!
Cars jump from track to track on the switchback racetrack as they zoom down the speedway to the finish line.
Two cars can be sent down the track so toddlers and preschool children can race to their heart’s content. Included are two three-inch-long cars with spiral-spinning graphics on their wheels.
Alternatively, try the wooden switchback racetrack by Hape.

Magnetic Car Loader Wooden Toy Set With 4 Cars and 1 Semi-Trailer Truck:

Toddlers will love playing with this magnetic wooden vehicle set by Melissa & Doug.
It includes a red truck with a magnetic arm, a car-carrier trailer, and four magnetic wooden cars.
The unique colors and numbers on each car inspire counting, sorting, and sequencing. It has a detachable trailer that features stabilizing tracks to keep the vehicle in place while the truck is in motion.

Wooden Train Set:

Encourage your child’s imagination with a wooden train set.
Playing with trains can help spur your child’s imagination as they develop their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
Give yourself some free time while your child plays for hours with a train set!
Try this stacking train by Melissa and Doug.

Brio My First Railway Beginner Pack Wooden Toy Train Set:

My First Railway Toy Train Set by Brio is the perfect toy for the creative toddler.
Start your budding train engineer on the right track with this cute wooden railway train set for toddlers.
This toddler train set includes a cute train with a special rainbow bridge and ramps for on-and-off rail play.
The track sections are so manageable to put together and take apart that your toddler can explore different track layouts as they create the railway of their dreams!

Animal Toys for Toddlers:

Here are a few fantastic natural animal toys for toddlers:

Grimm’s Natural Wooden Horse on Wheels:

This handcrafted horse from Germany is carved from solid wood and moves easily on its four wooden wheels. Toddlers will delight in pushing along this wonderful little wooden horse while developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

Older children will love to use this horse creatively for pretend play: On the farm, combined with other toys, or by itself.
Have your Horse pull a load by adding one of the compatible Wooden Wagons or Carriages from Grimm’s (sold separately)

Melissa & Doug Fold and Go Wooden Barn with 7 Animal Figures

This two-story fold-and-go wooden barn by Melissa & Doug is stocked with seven realistic plastic farm animals (a horse, cow, pig, sheep, goat, dog, and turkey), so it is not 100% natural. However, it’s terrific for farm play. Inside, you’ll find everything you need to have dairyland fun!
The folding corral can be moved around and adjusted to any number of shapes.
Inside the barn, each animal can get cozy in its own separate stall until it’s time to play again.
This wooden barn is great for imaginative play, storytelling, and fine motor skills.

Natural Waldorf Dolls for Toddlers:

Waldorf dolls for toddlers are ideal for pretend play and social-emotional development. This is one of the reasons that they have minimal facial features and just a hint of an expression. This allows children to use their imaginations and inner picturing capacities.

A Waldorf doll can easily be imagined to be happy or sad, laughing or crying, unlike more conventional dolls with rigid plastic faces and fixed expressions. This lack of detail allows toddlers to role-play and act out real or imagined events, or project their feelings onto them. They are therefore perfect for both social-emotional development and imaginative play.

Waldorf Doll for Toddlers

Waldorf dolls for toddlers are available in several styles, including those shown here.
Typically, they are about 11 to 24 inches tall and made from 100% natural materials of cotton and wool.
Their clothing is usually removable, so toddlers can dress them and undress them for hours of imaginative play.

Hape Happy Baby Toddler Pocket Dolls:

Each of these happy baby dolls for toddlers by Hape Toys has unique colors and diverse skin tones.
Playing with these little cuties promotes creativity, role-playing, and finger dexterity.
They come in a mixed assortment of 12 baby dolls that your toddler will LOVE!

Grimm’s Set of 12 Rainbow Friends:

A set filled with 12 adorable little wooden dolls, one for each month of the year!
These natural wooden peg dolls are crafted as simple human forms with little detail, encouraging children to use their imagination.
Toddlers love to use these wooden dolls for pretend play, counting, color recognition, and more!
If you are feeling crafty, make your own DIY rainbow peg dolls!

Grimm’s Rainbow of Little Waldorf Dolls in Organic Cotton, Set of 10 Dwarves With or without Beards:

This set of little Grimm dolls includes 10 Little Dwarfs (without beards), each in a different, vibrantly colored outfit.
Each doll’s skin and clothing are 100% organic cotton, and each has quartz sand in the base to keep it standing upright without support.
Also available in a Set of Rainbow Dwarfs with beards.

Best Wooden Building Blocks for Toddlers:

Block play is an essential activity for all children to experience from an early age. Building blocks for toddlers can promote the development of motor skills, color and shape perception, problem-solving, creativity, color/shape perception, spatial awareness, and the beginnings of logical thought.

More building block recommendations can be found in our roundup of natural baby toys and preschool toys, as well as in this collection of DIY Building Blocks for Kids.

Standard Unit Wooden Building Blocks:

This wooden block set by Melissa & Doug contains 60 natural-finished, smooth-sanded hardwood blocks that inspire hands-on, imaginative, screen-free play.
It is packaged in a handsome, wooden tray for easy storage.
Standard building blocks are ideal for introducing early pre-math concepts, including shapes, parts-to-whole, and sorting. They also help to develop hand-eye coordination and are great for teaching children patience.

Tree Blocks or Branch Slices: Wooden Building Blocks for Toddlers

Wooden building blocks for toddlers made from natural tree limbs are simple, unique, and beautiful.
Cut branches into various sizes and shapes, then sand the rough edges of the wood if needed to make your own.
These chunky “tree” blocks by Guidecraft are made from natural tree branches in a variety of widths and lengths, perfectly sized for small hands.
This set also includes a cotton mesh storage bag, making it an easy travel toy for toddlers.

Uncle Goose Nursery Rhyme Wooden Blocks for Toddlers:

Teach toddlers classic storytelling skills with this 28-block set.
Each block comes embossed with two iconic images from classic Mother Goose stories.
Read the playful text for each rhyme on the four other sides in our original, artful font.

Uncle Goose ALPHABET ABC Building Blocks:

Toddlers love these Uncle Goose alphabet blocks!
These beautiful blocks, proudly made in the USA, help toddlers learn the alphabet. Toddlers can learn their ABCs while they sequence, stack, sort, build, and match.

Nesting Blocks for Toddlers:

Nesting, sorting, and stacking blocks are a great educational toy for toddlers. Here are a few of my favorites:

Sorting and Stacking Nesting Blocks

Kids can stack these nesting blocks like these number blocks by Coogam to build a tall tower and nest small people and cars inside the colorful box. All vehicles are friction-powered; pull them back, and they will go on their own, providing kids with endless creative and imaginative play. Unique wooden human figures can be paired with various block buildings and pull-back vehicles, including a police car, a school bus, a fire truck, an ambulance, and more.
Alternatively, try these Safari nesting and stacking blocks featuring wild animals, or these On The Farm stacking and nesting cubes.
My daughter loves stacking nesting boxes like these and using them with dolls and animal toys, as shown in the photo below with our DIY Rainbow Peg Dolls. However, the baby in the wooden peg doll set is a bit too small for toddlers. Take it out and place it back in the set once children reach preschool age.
The alphabet nesting blocks shown in the photo below are no longer available, but there are several other options on the market, such as those mentioned above.

Related: DIY Tetris-Inspired Puzzle Cube

Best Wooden Push and Pull Toys for Toddlers:

Once your toddler begins to walk, push-and-pull toys are a must-have. Developmentally, using a pull toy is more complicated for toddlers than using a push toy. Instead of just looking and moving forward, your child has to hold their arm back and look back to make sure their toy is still there. Meanwhile, they’ll also be moving forward and looking for a clear route.

This is why I recommend starting with push toys. Introduce pull toys and ride-on toys once your toddler has mastered push toys. Our favorite push-and-pull toys for toddlers are listed below. I have included a few more push-and-pull toys that you may also like in our natural baby toy roundup.

PlanToys Plan Preschool Walk N Roll, Push and Pull:

While the wheel turns, the wooden ball inside this Plan Toys push-and-pull toy for toddlers hits the panels and creates a lovely sound, not nearly as annoying as the popper I used as a child!
Do you remember those popping push toys with the colored balls in that awful clear plastic dome? Pop, pop, pop, pop! Drove my mother crazy —that’s why we never had one for long — lol!
I actually enjoy listening to the children in my home daycare push and pull this one around because its soft melody lets me know where they are. You know how those toddlers can wander off!
I also love that this toy can be anything your child imagines it to be as they grow and develop. We’ve seen the kids vacuum the house, mow the lawn, and even ride a song horse with this imaginative walk, roll, and push play toy — haha!

Walk-A-Long Puppy Toy for Toddlers:

This Walk-Along Puppy toddler pull toy by Hape, like most of the toddler toys described in this post, has the potential for many years of use, unlike much of the competition.
Toddlers will not only enjoy taking this friendly puppy for walks, but it will also eventually encourage imitative and imaginative play and promote fantasy storytelling, role-playing, and creativity.

Wooden Building Blocks with Pull Wagon:

A set of building blocks with a pull wagon is a fantastic, play-based educational toy for toddlers.
This building block set with a pull wagon from Melissa & Doug includes 30 1-inch blocks featuring numbers, letters, and pictures to support vocabulary development.
You might also enjoy this alternative ABC block-and-pull-wagon set by Joqutoys.
Children love to stack blocks, build with them, balance them, combine them with other DIY blocks, and find several other creative ways to use them.
In our home childcare, natural wooden building blocks have been used as food, money, phones, you name it!

Best Eco-Friendly Ride-on Toys for Toddlers:

Here are a few of my favorite scoot-around and ride-on toys for toddlers, and how they benefit child development:

Scoot Around Ride-on Wood Bike for Toddlers:

Your new little walker will discover many ways to build confidence and stability with this fantastic scooter by Hape, perfect for a 1- to 3-year-old toddler girl or boy.
A four-wheel drive takes on a whole new meaning with this best-selling, foot-powered ride.
The good news is that this scooter’s rubber wheels won’t leave marks on the floors when your youngster goes for a spin in the house.
This ride-on scooter for toddlers is great for developing muscle strength and balance. Be sure to encourage lots of short rides so your child can increase the wheel time and distance as they gain more power and confidence.
A natural toddler toy that is perfect for older babies and toddlers who are beginning to test their mobility and develop active motor skills.
I find it to be an easily transportable toy for trips to the park, around the home, and more.

Wishbone 3 in 1 Original Bike:

Unlike any other running bike, the Wishbone bike evolves with a child’s development.
It starts as a trike at age one and converts into a running bike as the child grows.
With its environmentally sustainable design and innovative 3-bikes-in-1 feature, it is the ultimate pre-bike for toddlers.

Toddler Table and Chair and Kitchen Helper Stool for Toddlers:

A kid-sized wooden table and stool create a perfect place for playing, working, snacking, and learning. Many Waldorf home life and Montessori practical life activities, such as cutting a banana, require a table or desk and a chair. A step stool is also a helpful tool to have around for toddlers to gain independence at home.

If you like your toddler near you when you work in the kitchen (or your toddler must be near you at all times, like mine), I recommend getting a kitchen helper stool for Toddlers. Young children learn by watching us work. Learn more about raising helpers in How to Raise a Helper!

In the past, I recommended purchasing each of these items separately, but today you can buy an excellent four-in-one set!

4-in-1 Foldable Tower, Toddler Step Stool with Chalkboard, Desk, and Chair:

This convertible 4-in-1 Montessori and Waldorf-style stool with chalkboard, desk, and chair is perfect for toddlers 18 months and up.
The patented design sets up in seconds and easily moves from room to room. It is made from sturdy birchwood plywood and converts without tools for versatile use.
Helps children reach counters, sinks, and more to support independence.
Designed with child-led learning and sustainability in mind, and built to hold up to 150 lbs.
The built-in chalkboard encourages creativity and provides a surface for children to write.

Best Art Supplies for Toddlers

Head over to have a look at our list of the best art supplies for kids and why a young artist should use them.
Most of the art materials make excellent stocking stuffers for Christmas.
If I were to purchase only one art supply for my toddler, it would be these amazing beeswax block crayons. Once you experience the smooth consistency and vibrant colors of these 100% beeswax crayons, you will never turn back!

Related: Tools for Raising Helpers

Best Gifts for Toddlers: Natural Toddler Toys That Children Will LOVE

Natural toddler toys provide a rich sensory experience for the developing child and can promote imaginative play. This toddler gift guide contains natural toddler toys recommended by Waldorf and Montessori educators.

Provide your growing child with the gift of a more sustainable future with natural toys for toddlers!

Don’t forget to check out the Rhythms of Play Store and our family gift guide with ready-made and homemade gift ideas for the whole family!

Learn more about Nell Regan Kartychok, author of this list of natural toddler toys HERE, and Rhythms of Play HERE!

Natural Waldorf and Montessori educational toys for toddlers

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Comments

menucha says

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We have the Wishbone Bike recycled edition and it’s super cool!Haven’t tried the original but I’ve heard it’s wonderful.

Kat says

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Great list of natural toddler toys, Thank you! I’ve been having trouble finding wooden toys for my child. This is very helpful.

Tori says

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Thank you for this guide! This was great. It’s hard to find this info! Thank you for compiling.

- Nell Regan M.A. says
  
  at
  
  You’re welcome, Tori!
  
  We had a hard time finding the best natural and eco-friendly toddler toys for my daughter when she was a baby, so I figured I’d put this together for everyone else looking for the best of the best.
  
  So glad you found this list of toddler toys useful!
  
  Nell