Santa Claus is on his way, and it's time for him to pick out the best toys for your little ones! These are our favorite toys of 2025. Whether you have babies, preschoolers, early elementary kids, late elementary kids, or middle schoolers, there's a toy for you on this list. Check out choices for your nieces and nephews, too.
Best Toys for Babies in 2025
LaMaze Clip & Go Toys
These cute little animals make different sounds and have different textures depending on where you grab or squish them. This is great for babies just learning how to use their senses. You can also clip them on the handle of your car seat, giving baby something to look at and play with while you're driving. Listen for the crinkly sound so you know they're awake! We had a bug, a turtle, and a dragon, but there are so many options in 2025! Pick a chicken, a moose, a horse, or even an axolotl!
Inny Binny
This toy is like a shape sorter without limits! Stretch the bands to squeeze one of the six shape pieces inside the cube. The fun textures promote sensory learning. Babies also grasp concepts like in and out and how things fit into each other. No more frustrated banging shapes into spaces!
Melissa & Doug Pineapple Soft Stacker
It's part stuffed animal and part stacking toy, and all cuteness. The pineapple stacker is five pieces with a rattling cloth-covered base with an interior rod to stack the donuts of pineapple onto. The shapes have different textures, and some make crinkly sounds. Babies can stack them in a variety of ways for more adorable fun.
Learning Resources Peekaboo Learning Farm
©https://www.learningresources.com/item-peekaboo-learning-farm?srsltid=AfmBOorSF86r6qLZ-i0ZpBL4Cgqd38TrN_aDTeOVGLbbWsXUMPS7Kv9w – Original
This toy starts out as a fine motor skills toy where babies and toddlers learn to manipulate little objects. As they become toddlers, you can start using it to talk about animals, colors, and numbers for cognitive development. The roofs come off the farmhouses, and the animals double as finger puppets! This cute and educational toy should last beyond their first birthday.
Munchkin Float & Play Bubbles
©https://www.munchkin.com/float-play-bubbles-4-pack?srsltid=AfmBOopyH401f54x1XDYqSoEKt4ai9_hyJ_CzJGBVNwJGW79ppca-Gth – Original
Every baby needs a good bath toy, and these bubbles combine a fun look with sensory learning through sounds and colors. They're watertight, so hopefully you won't be cleaning mold out of them in six months. The textured rings on the outside keep them from rolling around when placed on a flat surface after bath time.
Best Toys for Preschoolers in 2025
VTech Pull & Sing Puppy
This toy promotes gross motor skills (pulling the puppy around) and cognitive development (learning letters and numbers from pushing the buttons). Plus, it's cute and has enough lights and sounds to be fun for your kid, but not so many that it's annoying to hear the same sound over and over again.
National Geographic Balance Stepping Stones
This toy is a hit at indoor recess at the preschool where I teach. You can just lay out the stones and have kids walk across, or use the spinner to make it a game. We've also had fun playing the floor is lava with these (as long as you have at least one stone per kid). It's a great way to promote gross motor skills and balance while having some screen-free fun.
Duplos
Your preschooler may not be big enough for LEGOs yet, but you can get started on the building toys trend with lots of cute Duplo sets in 2025. Top sellers this year include sets with characters from Bluey, Peppa Pig, Frozen, and Cars. Perennial favorites are trains featuring letters and numbers, zoo animals, and space shuttles.
Crayola Color Wonder Mess Free Light Up Stamper
If you have a little crafter on your hands, this toy is for you. It uses special Color Wonder ink and markers that only show up on Color Wonder paper. The stamp pad lights up as your preschooler presses down on it, and then they can make prints on the included paper, as well as draw with the Color Wonder markers. This toy comes with two themes: scented and Bluey. The one downside is that you'll have to buy more Color Wonder paper!
Leapfrog Magic Adventures Binoculars
These act as real binoculars or night vision goggles to allow kids to explore the world around them. Kids can also take pictures and peruse the BBC nature guide on the binoculars' built-in screen to get more information on what they see. There are also several nature-rated games you can play on the screen. Encourage kids to learn more about the outdoors with this educational toy.
Top Toys for Early Elementary Kids (Grades K-2)
Play-Doh Barbies
Have you ever gotten frustrated trying to make your own Barbie clothes? These five Barbies make fashion design easy with Play-Doh and sets of tools to sculpt it into fabric, ruffles, ribbons, and even a hairstyle for your Barbie. Creativity abounds as kids make new designs and play pretend with these fun new dolls.
Magna-Tiles Rail Racers
Buy the 33-piece or 90-piece version of these sets for endless hours of building and racing fun. Use the rails to create ramps for the balls to race down, while regular Magna-Tiles form towers and bridges. This is a fun STEM toy, too, as kids explore concepts like speed and momentum.
OllyBall
This may look like just a ball, but it's so much more. It's filled with helium, so you can throw or bounce it in the house, and it floats slowly instead of hitting objects at high speed. And you can get several versions with a paper-like exterior so that kids can color them themselves with ordinary markers or crayons. Ollyball comes in lots of different versions, including one with its own downloadable STEAM curriculum, a Peppa Pig-themed ball, and a red version specifically for Keepy Uppy.
Air Toobz
Do your kids love the wind tunnel exhibits at children's museums? Here's the chance to have one in your own home. Build the tubes into any shape you want and use the motor to push pressurized air through them. Balls or tiny character toys can float or shoot out of the tubes, depending on how much pressure you use. There are lots of expansion packs, so you can buy these early, and it will be a gift that keeps on giving.
Primal Hatch
Your kid can hatch and control their own baby T. rex! Once your dinosaur has hatched, you can use a clicker and a food reward to teach it different behaviors. You choose whether it's a friendly dinosaur or a vicious one.
Best Toys of 2025 for Late Elementary School Kids (Grades 3-5)
ESPN Virtual Reality
Experience all different kinds of sports in virtual reality. This ESPN set comes with the headset, medals, and a 128-page book detailing all of the different sports you'll walk, run, and jump through with the headset. You can experience more than 20 different moments in football, baseball, hockey, tennis, track and field, and more with this set.
Bitzee
These cute Tomagotchi-like toys originally came with just pets several years ago, but now you can get lots of versions, like Disney or Harry Potter characters, magical creatures, or dinosaurs. Select which animal you want to play with, and make sure it gets fed, played with, and rested. Each animal levels up, and you can play different games with it when you reach new levels. My son got his fully leveled up within a couple of weeks and was ready for the next one!
LEGO Gravity Drop
It's like a combination of LEGOs and a Rube Goldberg machine. Use specialty LEGO pieces to make a chain reaction machine, like a marble maze or zip line. There are hundreds of different combinations, making for hours of fun using both STEAM and creativity.
YLL Mini Karaoke Machine
If your elementary-age child is tech-savvy enough to pull up their favorite song on YouTube, this is the perfect gift for them. Use the microphones to create funny voices, or just to sing their heart out to their favorite tunes. It may not be quite as complex as a regular karaoke machine, but they won't need your help setting it up. This was one of the first gifts I got this year for my Wicked-obsessed fifth grader.
ZipString
It's like a yo-yo, only cooler! This Shark Tank invention feeds a loop of string through a set of spinning gears to create a string shape that you control in the air. You can use it to do all kinds of tricks, like walking through the loop, throwing balls through, or just making various shapes. It's rechargeable and comes in a glow-in-the-dark or a Spiderman-style wrist-mounted version.
Best Toys for Middle Schoolers (Grades 6-8) in 2025
Woobles
Tweens and teens can make their own cute little animals with these beginner crochet sets. Choose a single animal, or get a group of four animals. Each kit comes with everything you need (yarn, stuffing, a crochet hook, and button eyes), plus a pre-started crochet piece to work from.
Tetris Tumble XL
This fun jumbo game can be played in a big room or a yard. It's fun for all ages, but bigger kids might have an easier time finding the balance in this live-action Tetris-Jenga combination game. Roll the die to see what pieces you have to place, and try not to be the one to make the tower collapse!
3Doodler 3D Pen
Learn about 3D printing and start making your own 3D printed figures with this doodler pen. It comes with 20 different designs and video tutorials for you to create different things, and more than 100 strands of Doodler eco-plastic for your creations. Grown-ups may also enjoy giving this one a try!
Magshuto Knock Out Rail
This is like paper football got the ultimate makeover. Use the shooter to try to flick your magnetic pucks into four positions along the rail. The first player to get all four positions in their color wins! It's simple, competitive, and fun. Build your skills and strategy with this smart game.
Kanoodle SudoQube
Get your kid started early on puzzle solving with this 3D puzzle game. There are 100 different puzzles to solve, ranging from an easy 4×4 grid to a 5×5 board. Use the puzzle card to set up the different pieces, then try to put them in the right places so there are no repeating colors horizontally or vertically. This is one of a wide range of logic puzzle-based toys from Educational Insights.
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