Toys vs. Activities: Which One is Better for Toddlers?

Many kids are showered with toys from birth. Christmas, birthdays, and kids' meals bring more and more into the home, making toys an easily overwhelming part of childhood. However, you can set a standard early on. Are toys worth the hassle, or are activities better for toddlers?

Striking a balance between toys and activities is best for toddlers. Both encourage imaginative play and crucial skill development, but toys are better at providing targeted skill building and structure, while activities are better at flexibility and engaging multiple skills at once.

No surprise, toys and activities are both essential to toddler development. But, is there a balance? Should we emphasize one over the other?

How Do Toys Benefit Toddler Development?

Toys are a medium by which play can happen, but they are not the only medium. Play can happen through activities and games. Moreover, toys are not only items marketed as toys, but also items in the environment that your toddler can play with like a toy (kitchen utensils, cups, blankets, and other safe items).

How do toys and safe everyday items help your little one develop? Here are a few ways:

Sensory Exploration

In the toddler stage, your child is still trying to understand the world through sensory exploration. Sensory exploration is exploring the world through touching, smelling, tasting, seeing, and hearing.

Research over the years has shown how beneficial "sensory play" is, which is why the baby and toddler toy market is flooded with "sensory toys." However, not all toys are created equal.

Sensory play creates rich neural pathways when the play involves a sensory-rich environment (source). This does not mean taking your toddler to an arcade's environment of overwhelming flashing lights and loud sounds. It means an environment that supports focus on stimulating the senses rather than overwhelming them.

So, selecting toys that stimulate certain senses can help your little one expand her understanding of the physical world. Read more specifics in Are Toddlers Too Old for Sensory Toys?

Targeted Skill Building

Toys are a nifty way to promote focused practice on building particular skills. For example, if you notice that your little one struggles with hand-eye coordination, you can invest in a toy to help her practice, like stacking cups.

Tricycles, big balls, and buckets primarily promote gross motor skills, while shape sorters, stacking rings, and wooden puzzles challenge fine motor skills. Of course, these toys also engage your toddler's mind.

Structured Play and Focus

Little ones often focus better if they have something in hand. Imaginative play begins in the toddler years, but it always has physical elements to it, like toys or household items.

Some toys have multiple steps or parts, which makes a game that your little one can try to finish (like shape sorters). However, it is totally appropriate at this age to not finish the game due to distraction or interest in using the pieces for some other game.

How Do Activities Benefit Toddler Development?

Activities can be open-ended or structured play. They are different from toys in that the play does not center around physical toys or items. For example, sensory activities can be playing in water, sand, mud, or crunchy leaves.

Toddlers can benefit from solo or group activities, especially if they involve their imaginations. Let's take a look at some of the benefits activities promote.

Open-Ended Play

Activities may include toys or items for a game, but the focus is not placed on the things themselves. So, activities tend to be more flexible and open-ended.

For example, the sensory activities I mentioned above (playing in water, sand, mud, or crunchy leaves) are not bound by what the toys can do; they are guided by experiencing the mess.

Imaginative activities can be assigning your toddler a role and running around the house pretending. Again, the objects around your little dinosaur or superhero are not crucial to the activity--the focus is on being the dinosaur or superhero.

Open-ended activities are essential for exploring emotions, running through possibilities, and processing actual happenings in life. They are also fantastic for promoting language development and friendships (source).

Diverse Skill Development

Toys are useful for building focused skills, but activities excel at bringing multiple skills together. Playing outdoors, dancing, singing, and pretending pull together physical, language, social, and creative skills.

You can think of activities as anything your toddler can do alone or together with you for play. Again, toys can be a part of activities, but they are not the focus.

If you have multiple kids at home of various ages, this article is for you: Multiple Young Kids at Home: 10 Fun Activities at Home for Sibling Groups.

5 Things to Keep in Mind for Toddler Toys and Activities

We've established that toys and activities are essential for toddler development, so they both have their place in your home and schedule. However, more is not always better because quality beats quantity in this case.

So, here are 5 things to keep in mind to make the most of your toddler's toys and activities.

1. Variety is Key

Stuffed animals and pulling toys are superb toys for your toddler, but avoid making those the only toys you have around the house. Likewise, coloring and singing are fantastic activities, but your kiddo is going to miss out on well-rounded development if these are the only activities she does.

However, you don't have to give up on having a clutter-free home! You can choose a variety of solid toys and activities that promote various skills and rotate through them every couple of weeks.

Here is a chart of a few toddler skills to consider and toy and activity ideas for each one:

2. Keep Things Age Appropriate

Many well-meaning parents push their little ones too hard by giving them toys meant for older ages or playing games that are a bit over their child's head. 

However, if pushed too hard, a child's confidence can be crushed, resulting in shying away from new things, shrinking from challenges, and easily getting upset with a toy (source).

Your toddler will likely want and ask for cool-looking toys that are well ahead of his developmental stage, especially if he has older siblings or friends. But, toys have age ratings for reasons, such as safety and ability.

Admittedly, some kids are developmentally a bit ahead of the curve. My son has a board-gamer's mind, so he regularly plays board games designed for players 5 years older than him.

Just use common sense in such cases by asking the following questions:

• Can my child be hurt by this toy or activity? (small swallowable pieces, sharp edges, etc.)

• Is my child likely to lose pieces and have less fun playing with it next time?

• Is my child probably going to get frustrated by the toy or the game's rules?

• Can this activity or game be simplified to make it more fun for my toddler?

• Is there a more suitable substitute?

Actually playing with the toy, game, or activity with your toddler is the ideal way to monitor your little one's safety and frustration level while also having a good time. Avoid letting your toddler play with something meant for kids beyond his age alone!

3. Choose Toys That Make Your Toddler Active

Toddlers have got to move for their healthy development--and that's not often a challenge at this age! But, if given lots of passive toys and activities for sitting still and watching (like screens), toddlers will learn to sit still for long periods of time.

I'm not suggesting that you primarily pick toys and activities that give your little one a workout. I'm suggesting that you provide plenty of open-ended toys and activities that do nothing on their own.

Such toys and activities are not meant to be watched; that would be boring! Open-ended toys and activities are meant to be played with, and your child is supposed to make it happen. When your toddler is the "doer," he will play actively.

4. Don't Use Toys as a Crutch

In the first year, you can hardly catch a break from your little one. The older your child gets, the more time she can spend playing on her own. However, it's easy to fall into using toys as a crutch to keep more time for yourself.

Is that bad? At least toys are not screens! Well, if you are buying toys explicitly for the purpose of distracting your child long enough that you can get something done, it will be hard to break that habit later.

Besides, if the point is to distract your child for 30 minutes, then TV shows or loud, flashy disco toys are efficient. The question is: What will you do when that show or flashy toy no longer satisfies your toddler for 30 minutes?

The alternative is to foster a healthy habit of independent play in 15 or 30-minute stints broken up by short play times or activities with you, another adult, or siblings.

This is very hands-on at the beginning, but you may be surprised at how readily your toddler will become absorbed in imaginative play when not distracted by shows and noise.

5. Together Is Better

You are your toddler's world at this age. So, when you take time to play or talk with your toddler, you are strengthening your bond and building your toddler's confidence. 

Moreover, you are your child's first and most important example of how to love others and do life well. Since your toddler, like those lion cubs, learns by mimicking you, spending time together playing and doing activities is educational.

Learn more about bonding with your child and how that bond sets your child up for life in The Science Behind Bonding with Your Baby: A Comprehensive Guide.

Broader Concept: Why Is Play Important to Toddler Development?

Kids need to play. It's how they develop in character, body, mind, emotion, and connection. However, kids nowadays are playing less than they were twenty years ago--8 hours per week less (source).

To avoid becoming part of this statistic, you need to make play part of your family culture; meaning, your family ought to invest time into playing together. Sorry, simply looking at your toddler and saying, "Go play" is not going to cut it!

Health guidelines suggest that preschoolers be physically active for at least 3 hours a day (source). Unfortunately, kids these days are getting far less than that! However, screens are not the only culprit; the lack of play space, time outdoors, and parental interest in play time are also to blame.

You can read more about the benefits of playing outside for your baby or toddler in Why Your Baby or Toddler Needs to Spend More Time in Nature.

Lion Cubs

One picture that may help you visualize how vital play is to your little one is lion cubs. Lion cubs are adorable and helpless at birth, so if momma doesn't eat, neither do they.

Over time, the cubs will grow and play hard: leaping, stalking, attacking, and wrestling. Through playing, the cubs push the limits of what they can do and experiment with different maneuvers, though they have no idea how important this practice will be in the future.

Once the cubs can eat meat, they shadow their mother on hunts. The lioness tolerates her cubs' play on the journey and teaches hunting, tracking, and killing prey by example. All that playing and shadowing develops the cubs' mind, body, and connection to others.

Your little lion learns by doing. Exploring, practicing, chattering, goofing off, experimenting with the things he sees you use every day--these playful activities help your little one develop (source).

Does that mean you should promote his desire to jump off the furniture? Probably not, but you can create a safe place for him to jump!

I delved into the specifics of how play benefits toddler development in The Power of Play in Speech Development: Best Activities for Toddlers.

In a Nutshell

No question about it: both toys and activities are crucial to your toddler's development. However, the types of toys and activities you choose matters, and they are even better when you participate!