A Toy-Based Guide to Keeping Your Child Occupied During Lockdown

We all want what is best for our kids. But sometimes it’s difficult to know what is best. I want to give you and your child a head start by providing some of the best materials and developmentally sound toys for you to use/buy. As an expert in Pediatric Sleep and Early Childhood Development, but most of all, a Mother myself, I have compiled an extremely comprehensive list of some of my favorite offerings that are time tested and loved by every baby and child I know.  Some of the things I’d usually recommend aren’t available due to shipping delays, Covid restrictions and lack of stock, but I’m sure you will find some value below. If you cannot find the exact item I’ve recommended, see if you can find a similar item by matching the picture or concept. (Editor’s Note: They are all hyperlinked to amazon to make it easy as pie!)

For starters, I want to shed some light on an important point that deters parents from getting some of the best things for their children – the age range on the product. Age ranges used to be just to ensure that a child doesn’t choke on a material and to make sure it wasn’t hazardous to them. Nowadays, the age range is also decided by manufacturers who, quite frankly, have no concept of the material they are producing and may not even have kids themselves. Below, I will outline some of the main benefits of each item, to your baby or child, and put my own recommendations on an appropriate age span. Please keep in mind however that if a material has small pieces it needs to be supervised closely when a child is playing with it to ensure it stays in their hands. Make sure to count the pieces when you put activities away to ensure that pieces aren’t lost or misplaced and to double check that your child won’t find it later when it would still pose as a choking hazard.

Note: my teaching background has ingrained in me not to call toys “toys”, but rather “materials”, “tools”,  “lessons”, “manipulatives” or “the child’s work”. I’ve found this rephrasing really helps children and caregivers to have respect for these belongings – and they less often end up in a pile in the corner. In addition to suggesting educational learning materials, I’ve also given a couple options of staple furniture that everyone can benefit from. To include a table and chair set for your child to work/play from and eat at and a shelf or cubby system that makes cleaning up more manageable for you and your child. 

When I reflect on why I buy what I buy, and how I decide if it’s a good purchase to make, I use the following rule of thumb: First, will this be a choking hazard to my child? If so, will I use this material with my child under close supervision to allow my child to benefit from the material until they can grow into themselves enough to use it without it being a choking hazard any longer? (As an aside, children are often said to be responsible with materials from age 3 – but you will know your child best and there are some 2+ year olds who wouldn’t put toys in their mouths and there are 4+ year olds who still do as well. So just supervise them either way).

Once I deduce the safety of the material, which includes ensuring there are no toxic materials and as BPA free as possible, then I move on to the material itself. Will this material be useful for more than one purpose? Will the material or parts thereof be useful for many kinds of play? For example, can we use the farm as a farm? Can we also use the farm as a house for characters as your child gets older? Another example, can we use the egg shapes for matching, and sorting as eggs, and then also use them in the play kitchen as an add in the imaginary cooking most children love to do. When a material or activity can be used in multiple ways I consider it to be a high mileage activity. Another indicator of a high mileage material is that it is good for a baby just as it can also be enjoyed by a 6 year old. The eggs again, are great for babies as they can roll (tracking exercise), a baby can crawl around and chase them, an older child can throw and catch them or put them on a spoon in hand for balancing, and even older children love matching and sorting with them. Anything you can get 2-6 years of fun out of is a good investment.

The next thing I look at before making a product purchase, is how easy is it to clean and maintain the item? Since I homeschool my children and work with other children from time to time, I have to make sure that I can keep everything as clean as possible. Items can be washed in the dishwasher or washing machine are the best. But if they can’t, I look for items that are easy to wipe down with organic or earth friendly – and of course – mouth friendly solutions. 

Another point to note is that oftentimes, what you pay for is what you get, but this is not alway the case. We are lucky that in this day and age there are suppliers that are able to make things more cost effectively. Magna tiles is an example of this. Despite being a name-brand, they are a great staple in everyone’s home. However, if you get Picasso tiles, they are far more cost effective – with the same effect. I actually have 6 sets of Picasso tiles. My kids and their friends absolutely love building mansions, zoo’s, pet hospitals, and all kinds of contraptions with enough Picasso tiles for everyone to feel they have more than enough. (This makes sharing easy). They have even had to use their engineering minds to work as a team, standing on chairs and building towers that reach the ceiling. One box wouldn’t be able to achieve the same outcome and versatility. Similarly, we have 4 boxes of marble run pieces. Everyone loves to make giant tracks for the marbles and it teaches kids to create more complex systems.

Toy subscriptions like Monti Kids, Lovevery, Tinker Crate, Koala Crate, and Kiwico are great. There is also a great Fatherly article with more details on kid kits.

Although I’m formally trained in the Montessori Method, I have aimed to keep as balanced and receptive a perspective as possible to other varieties of parenting ideologies. The core idea I use is that I consider the following materials as building blocks for learning. In this list, there will be some materials that resonate more with some parents than others. Take what you want from this – leave what doesn’t – you choose your own adventure. 

If you have a question about a certain toy or material, feel free to comment below. I can easily clarify if and why something will be good for a certain age. 

See Also

The 72 Best Children’s Books

Keep in mind that if you decide to buy a bunch of things on this list, do not introduce them all at once to your child. They will get excited but also overwhelmed and will play 10 seconds with each item and then off to the next thing, or may just play with the box more than the item itself – I’m sure you’ve seen this happen at Christmas or birthday time. 

Introduce one thing at a time, even if it’s something new in the AM and then something else in the PM. Or maybe just plan a couple things at first, and then over a couple of days keep bringing out another item. If your child is over 12 months, you can even get a lesson mat and begin to teach them how to “use one activity at a time” and “keep their work on their lesson mat” and even to “put their work away before choosing a new work”.

If you find your child has lost interest in a certain material or toy, it’s likely you just need to rotate them. By putting them away in the closet for a month or so and bringing them back out, you will find it’s a whole new activity all over again. I have a couple of sets of toys/activities that I am rotating every month or so. Think of it this way, since babies’ brains are developing so rapidly, a month from now they will literally be a whole new baby and will have skills they didn’t have before and will therefore be able to approach a material in a whole new way. You can also model or demonstrate extensions to your child so they get ideas of other ways to use materials.

An extension is showing your child different ways to use the same material. For example, using the toddler shape sorter with keys, you can show your child how to sort the shapes, you can also show them how to use the keys. Those are two obvious ways to use the material. But what if you showed them how to put characters or people inside each door and modeled ringing an imaginary doorbell or knocking on the door to say hello to the characters, now that would be an extension. Moreover, you could find other things in your house that fit in the holes like crayons, or buttons, or other small objects of the same color and show your child how to sort the colors of the objects. Or even just give a spoon and bowl of dry pasta or beans and let your child fill the holes of the sorter with beans or pasta, those would all be extensions to the material and make it last longer and be explored in more complex ways, which helps both you and your child think more critically about the materials. 

I will be compiling more Miss Megan Resources, and will cover in greater depth topics such as: mindfulness, kids yoga, MM fav books, MM approved shows, mealtime, picky eaters, teaching time management to kids, how to build a calming corner, bathtime, making naptime and bedtime a breeze, and more. 

I hope you found this useful! 

Kindly, Miss Megan 

Ps. One of my all time favorite resources is Lakeshorelearning.com and since I plan on homeschooling forever, I often use this site for additional teaching materials, workbooks, and more.

Miss Megan is an expert in early child development, sleep and conscious parenting. She has worked with children and been a special needs, twin and triplets expert for over 20 years, a Montessori Directress and Baby Nurse for 15 years, and run 3 Montessori daycares. She has also been a two-time surrogate (inc. a set of twins delivered Jan 20′), and have two kids; Haiden (6.5yrs) and Hazel (5yrs).  She is also Head of Product at Batelle Sleep School, a remote 7 day program, that teaches parents how to get their baby or child settled to bed in 5 minutes or less, within a week. Results guaranteed. If you are interested in hearing more about the remote sleep school, you book a pre-consultation here.

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