If you’re looking for the best STEM toys for 2-year-olds, you’ve come to the right place. This list includes the best building blocks, sorting, and matching games, and simple puzzles that can help your child develop important skills (1). With these toys, your child will be well on their way to a bright future.
According to studies, it is beneficial to introduce your children to STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) toys at a young age. Toddlers who play with these types of toys are better able to experiment, collaborate, think critically, and solve problems. Many of these toys for 2-year-olds are designed to foster a child’s creativity and imagination. STEM toys can help children develop important skills that they will use throughout their lives.
Our Top Picks
- Best Stacking Toy: Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack Ring Stacking Toy
- Best Magnetic Toy: HABA Town Maze Magnetic Puzzle Game
- Best Hammer & Ball Toy: Durable Pound A Ball Toy
- Best Building Blocks Toy: The Block Set by Lovevery
- Best Construction Toy: Goobi Construction Set
- Best Matching Toy: MAGIFIRE Playtime Matching Eggs for Toddlers
- Best Musical Toy: Quercetti Saxoflute
- Best Puzzle Toy: Melissa & Doug Deluxe Jumbo Knob Wooden Puzzle
- Best Bath Toy: Yookidoo Baby Bath Toy
- Best RC Toy: Liberty Imports 2 Pack RC Cartoon Police Car and Race Car
In This Article
HappyBabyHub’s Best STEM Toys For 2-Year-Olds Picks
Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack Ring Stacking Toy – Best Stacking Toy
- Great way to learn colors and shapes
- The bottom unscrews, which helps for easy storage
- Bright colors
- Easy to grab for a 2-year-old
- The container’s top for the shapes doesn’t stay on
The Rock-a-Stack toy is a classic that is sure to delight your little one’s tiny fingers! It features five brightly colored rings on a base that wobbles and moves when your baby plays with it. Baby’s First Blocks is even more thrilling, with your child sorting shapes into a bucket and dropping them repeatedly to release all the vibrant blocks.
This bat-at activity and shape-sorting fun will keep your child busy and help them hone their fine motor and problem-solving abilities. The rings and blocks are perfect for little hands to grasp and manipulate, promoting hand-eye coordination and dexterity. Your baby will develop big thinking abilities as they use trial and error to place the shapes in the right slots and stack the rings from largest to smallest.
HABA Town Maze Magnetic Puzzle Game – Best Magnetic Toy
- Super cute graphics
- Bright and cheerful
- Very strong magnets
- The balls are actually plastic on the outside
- A whole lot smaller than it looks online
Get ready to race with this fun-filled navigation game where your little ones can assist the colorful balls in finding their way back to the same color garage. But be careful, there are blocked roads in some areas! Using the wand to explore the city, your child can develop fine motor skills and strategic thinking while overcoming obstacles.
This Montessori-inspired toy will keep your 2-year-old entertained and engaged during quiet time or long drives. With this all-in-one activity, the magnetic toy can help improve your toddler’s dexterity, color recognition, counting, and visual-spatial skills.
Durable Pound A Ball Toy – Best Hammer & Ball Toy
- Easy to assemble
- Fun to play with
- Holds toddler’s attention for a long time
- Colorful and attractive
- Make sure to play on a carpet to prevent balls from jumping the track and rolling away
With a hammer and balls designed specifically for little hands, this toy is perfect for helping your child develop their dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and manipulation skills. They’ll love watching the balls glide down the layers and roll onto the bottom tray after being pounded or hammered. This toy is great for cause-and-effect learning and will keep your child entertained and stimulated for hours!
The Block Set by Lovevery – Best Building Blocks Toy
- They are colored wonderfully
- Hold up to child wear and tear
- This block set has so many different options for play and learning
- There are enough blocks in the set that you can split it and have some in multiple rooms/play locations
- The blocks are very smooth which is good for little fingers but also makes them a little slippery making it hard to stack
This comprehensive set of solid wood blocks is packed with over 70 heirloom-quality pieces, making it perhaps the most complete block set ever! With more than 20 stage-based activities, your child can engage in endless hours of problem-solving, creativity, and spatial development fun!
These blocks are ingeniously designed to inspire pretend play and foster your child’s spatial awareness, cognitive abilities, and problem-solving skills. Playing with blocks of various sizes, colors, and shapes in patterns will help your little one develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. These modular features can even be used for early physics experiments to explore concepts like force, gravity, and cause and effect.
Goobi Construction Set – Best Construction Toy
- The large size is perfect for little hands
- Lightweight
- Magnetic
- Multiple ways to connect them together and make 2D and 3D shapes
- Magnets are strong enough for small constructions mostly
With large, ergonomically formed Goobi Junior toys, toddlers can safely investigate magnetism and its alluring and repellent qualities. Meanwhile, older kids can use the parts to build a variety of more challenging 3D creations.
This 20-piece set includes 12 plastic bars with powerful magnetic pulls and eight light hollow steel balls with metallic paint. Plus, these lightweight pieces come in a rainbow of vivid hues, including red, blue, green, and yellow. Goobi is perfect for STEM education and encourages creativity while developing a toddler’s sense of proportion.
MAGIFIRE Playtime Matching Eggs for Toddlers – Best Matching Toy
- These are absolutely adorable
- When you split them apart they have awesome shapes for your children to learn from the different styles of shapes
- They look very much like real eggs and a carton
- Great to keep a toddler busy without making a huge mess
- Currently, each egg has a different shape but a few of the colors repeat themselves
This fantastic egg toy set will not only entertain your child, but also help them improve their sorting, hand-eye coordination, and color recognition skills! The smooth egg shape is perfect for little fingers to hold and manipulate independently, allowing for hours of self-directed playtime.
Suitable for kids aged 18 months and up, this high-quality toddler toy is crafted from BPA-free plastic and other safe materials, ensuring durability and longevity. With the included plastic container, cleaning up and storing the eggs has never been easier!
Quercetti Saxoflute – Best Musical Toy
- Since you can assemble and reassemble it, it’s very versatile
- It’s a tuba, a trumpet, a saxophone, a trombone – and much more.
- You can use as many or as few pieces as you want; they all go together easily
- Great fun for the musically inclined toddler
- Some parts fit loosely
With 16 interconnecting tubes, including a mouthpiece and trumpet end, your 2-year-old can design and create their own unique and colorful instrument. Encourage them to experiment with different configurations to see how it affects the sound and pitch.
This construction kit is made of premium ABS plastic, making it indestructible and safe for kids of all ages. Plug the holes in the green pipes to alter the notes you play! Whether they want to build a flute, trumpet, saxophone, or something entirely different, the possibilities are endless.
Melissa & Doug Deluxe Jumbo Knob Wooden Puzzle – Best Puzzle Toy
- Thick, sturdy, medium-weight board with smooth back and round corners
- Easy to grasp knobs, even for a baby
- 8 Large, thick, and durable Geometric Pieces (8 colors)
- Color-matching backgrounds for each piece’s recess hole
- The top of the board, pieces, and backgrounds are a heavy paper laminate, which will get some bangs and probably should not get wet
This delightful wooden puzzle with its jumbo knobs is the ideal way to teach your little ones about shapes and colors. It’s also a great tool to help them refine their motor skills and develop their problem-solving abilities.
Your child will love matching the colorful shapes to their designated slots, while the complimentary colors underneath make it easier for them to get it right. This puzzle set includes eight unique shapes with bright colors and distinctive edges, and each piece comes with a corresponding picture beneath it, making it easier for your child to match them up.
Yookidoo Baby Bath Toy – Best Bath Toy
- Perfect size
- Easy to use
- Plenty of feats to keep them busy and living the bath
- The suction is constant from all pieces
- Sometimes it doesn’t always stick the best if the baby pulls on it or bumps it
This unique toy creates unexpected water effects, making it an excellent way to introduce STEM-based education to your little scientist.
The set includes two play items: a test tube container with detachable funnels for filling, pouring, and playing, with volume markings from 1 to 10, and a tub-mounted test tube holder for playing and storage. To produce ten water sprays, pour water into the water gauge funnel, spin the gauge, and watch as the propeller spins, the eyes roll, and water streams from the lips, providing hours of entertainment and education.
Liberty Imports 2 Pack RC Cartoon Police Car and Race Car – Best RC Toy
- Plays music
- Very durable
- Easy for little hands
- Guaranteed hours of enjoyment
- Each car/remote set uses 5 AA batteries, so make sure you’re stocked up
Introducing the perfect remote-control car for young kids who are just beginning to explore the world of remote-control toys! This exciting police car honks and plays music when you press a button, and the headlights even flicker to add to the fun. With just two buttons, driving the car is a breeze, but the array of buttons will keep your little one engaged for hours!
Even better, two kids can play together with these cars as they operate on different frequencies. Perfect for small children, these vehicles are easy to control with big, straightforward buttons that move the car forward, backward, and left with ease.
How To Choose A STEM Toy For 2-Year-Olds?
- Difficulty: It should be challenging enough to engage the child without being so difficult that they become frustrated. Look for toys that can be used in a variety of ways and that offer different levels of challenge to keep kids engaged as they grow.
- Age-Appropriate: STEM toys often involve small pieces that could pose a choking hazard, so make sure to choose one that is age-appropriate. Luckily, there are plenty of toys out there that are appropriate for 2-year-olds.
- Interest: See what types of toys and games your child gravitates toward and follow their lead. If they love blocks, for instance, stock up on building or construction toys, which teach basic engineering concepts. It’s also important to engage with your child during play.
- Tools: Most STEM toys include specific tools and equipment that are necessary for use. These necessary tools are a terrific way to teach STEM to your child, whether it’s a kid-friendly microscope or an app that lets them program a robot.
- Safety: When selecting toys for toddlers, it is crucial to consider their safety. It is important to choose toys that are not a choking hazard and are large enough for their little hands (2). To ensure that the toys are secure, tug on the parts to see if they come apart easily.
The Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) Toy Assessment Framework was also released by the Toy Association to help set more precise criteria for whether toys may be categorized as STEM/STEAM toys. Their thorough structure states that toddler STEM toys should include the following (3):
- It must be enjoyable and absorbing, simple to use, inclusive, and helpful for developing skills.
- It should encourage step-by-step learning and have real-world applicability, active participation, the arts, rational thinking, and open-ended play.
- Encourage learning in at least two specialized STEM fields.
What Are STEM Toys?
Stem toys are specifically designed to help children develop key science, technology, engineering, and math skills. These toys often incorporate elements of both logic and creativity and can help kids learn to think critically and solve problems (4). Stem toys are generally appropriate for kids of all ages, and can be both educational and fun.
What Are The Benefits Of STEM Toys For 2-Year-Olds?
The benefits of STEM toys for toddlers include promoting cognitive development, encouraging problem-solving and critical thinking, and encouraging an interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. STEM toys can help toddlers develop essential skills for success in school and in their future careers.
Activities such as playing with blocks, solving puzzles, and playing shape games have a significant impact on the early development of spatial abilities, which are essential for success in STEM professions (5).
Additionally, research has shown that STEM toys can promote gender equality in STEM fields by inspiring girls to pursue careers in science and engineering.
What Makes A Good STEM Toy?
There are a few things that make a good stem toy. First, the toy should be engaging and encourage the child to explore. Second, the toy should be safe and durable. Third, the toy should be age-appropriate. All of these factors are important in ensuring that the child has a positive experience with the toy and that they are able to learn and grow from playing with it.
Do STEM Toys Work?
Children’s confidence in learning math and science concepts can be increased through exposure to STEM principles at an early age. Using STEM toys is a fun and effective way to teach kids the basics of science, technology, engineering, and math. Playing with these kinds of toys can help children develop important critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Ultimately, STEM toys have the potential to create a lifetime of interest in these essential fields.
