Product: Horse Hopper
Company: Appleround
Recommended Age Range: 18 months to 4 years
Price Range: ~$20
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Review: My mom purchased one of these horse hoppers for my 18 month old for Christmas. All of my other kids (ages 3, 5, and 7 years) loved it so much that he hardly got a turn on Christmas to ride it. My mom felt so bad for the little guy that she ordered a “brother” for the original bouncy horse. Even having 2, these horses still get fought over all the time.

For at least a month after Christmas, it was the toy that every child that came over for a playdate gravitated toward. One of my mom friends even took it for a ride one day. It really holds up. A 10 year old I know likes it so much, I’ve joked that I’m going to buy him one for his birthday.

Now that we’ve had these horses for 4 months, I can really say with confidence that it is a toy that my kids don’t seem to get tired of it. My toddler (the one it was originally intended for) bounces on it every day. He has a preferred one, which he calls Greenie Beanie. If one of his siblings takes a ride on that particular horse hopper, he loudly lets his disapproval be known.

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Product: Magna-Tiles
Company: Valtech
Website: www.magnatiles.com
Recommended Age Range: All Ages
Price Range: ~$120 (for 100 pieces)
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Comments: Even though our family has owned the 100 piece Magna-Tiles set for 4 years (thanks, Dad!), I’ve held back on recommending them because they are just so darn expensive. I love owning them, but I didn’t pay for them, and I’m still not sure that I would. (If I could find a used or discounted set, it would be a no-brainer.)

Also, my first 2 kids did not really enjoy them that much when they were toddlers. They preferred our Magformers. The Magna-Tiles are great for making large structures, while the Magformers are better for making 3-dimensional forms you can hold in your hands. My first 2 kids were easily frustrated when the Magna-Tile shapes they tried to build broke apart in their hands. To be fair, I probably would not drop $100 all at once on Magformers either, but I’ve ended up spending over $100, by buying sets a little a time. Now we have about an equal sized set of Magformers and Magna-Tiles for about similar prices total.

It turns out that kids really just need to get used to playing with the different types of magnetic toys for them to be fun. My current 2 year old has loved them for over a year. He plays with them several times a week and can make some pretty incredible structures for someone so small. I recently gave him the Magformers and, being so used to the Magna-Tiles, he was very frustrated that *those* didn’t behave the way he was accustomed to. It seems both magnetic toys are great for all ages, but owning both can cause some difficulties for young kids.

Anyway, since the toddler frequently likes to spread the Magna-Tiles all over the floor and leave them there, my 4 and 6 year olds have re-discovered their love of them as well. They like to build bridges and forts for their action figures and castles for their dolls. After 4 years of being stepped on bashed around, I’m pretty sure these tiles are indestructible.

Probably the best aspect of these toys though is that they can be packaged in a small, dense box (about the size of a shoe box). Our house is so overrun with toys, I love that they don’t take up much space. Also, they are a great toy to bring out when multiple kids are going to be playing together. I’ve brought them to grandparent’s houses and yoga class so that all the kids could entertain themselves. Once I leant them to my sister when she babysat for a family with lots of kids. They are basically a great, foolproof toy for keeping kids engaged for a surprisingly long amount of time.

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Product: Three Little Piggies
Company: SmartGames
Website: www.smartgames.eu
Recommended Age Range: 3-4 years
Price Range: ~$25
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Comments: I bought this game for my daughter who is a couple months shy of 3 and a half. She also has Castle Logix made by the same company for the same age range and Bunny Peek-a-Boo, meant for kids 2 and up by the same company. She was not able to do Bunny Peek-a-Boo at all until she was over 3 and even now, she’s only able to do the starter puzzles. She’s beginning to be able to do Castle Logix, but even the easiest puzzles take her a while to figure out.

This Three Little Piggies game was appealing when I discovered it, because the other games she has feature no story or plotline. She loves the story of the three little pigs, so I thought this game might be easier for her to understand than the others. Maybe she doesn’t understand why I’m asking her to spend time replicating the picture in the other games she has, but she instinctually knows that those little piggies need protecting from that big bad wolf.

We just got the puzzle in the mail today and I think the age range of 3-6 is appropriate on the low end and too high on the upper end. My 3 year old understands what needs to be done and was able to do the first two puzzles by herself (her attention span doesn’t last longer than that). However, they were challenging for her. They each took her between 5 and 10 minutes. After she did two puzzles, we gave her 5 and a half year old brother a turn. This puzzle was way too easy for him. We eventually skipped to the hardest puzzle and he was still able to do it in under 2 minutes.

There are a few things I really liked about this game. First, it comes with a wordless picture book telling the story of the 3 little pigs. Both of my kids really liked the pictures and I was not expecting to find a book in the game, so that was a pleasant surprise. I “read” the book to them by describing what was happening in each picture and they loved it. One of the pictures in particular of the wolf yelling in pain after he kicks the brick house made my kids laugh out loud.

Another thing I like about this game is that after my 3 and 5 year olds were done with their challenges, they spent about 15 minutes playing together with the pieces, essentially acting out the story of the 3 pigs. That was super cute. Another happy surprise was that unlike the other games we have, there are actually 2 different types of challenges. Today we tried the challenge where you have to hide the pigs in their house from the wolf, but there are also puzzles where the goal is to fit the houses on the playing board with the pigs outside their houses. I’m not sure there is as much of a story behind that secondary goal, but it’s nice to have a whole other set of challenges.

I do have one complaint regarding this game. I think it would have been better if they had made the 3 pigs and the wolf just a tiny bit bigger so that they would fit more snugly in the board. They have a rubbery feel, so I think it would have been possible to make it so you had to shove them into their holes, but as it is, they are pretty easy to knock over. This is not a problem at all for my 5 year old. However, my 3 year old seems to solve these puzzles more by trial and error than envisioning where each piece should go. Since I was right next to her to help her, I could fix the pieces every time she knocked them over, but she would not be able to play this game entirely by herself as the pieces needs to be fixed every 20 seconds or so. As she gets older, this will be less of an issue.

Overall, I think this is a great puzzle game for a mid to late 3 or early 4 year old. It gets the child thinking critically and using their spatial reasoning skills. It’s also self-motivating since it’s based on a popular fairy tale so it’s great for encouraging the child to not give up in the face of difficulty. The story book and the little toy pieces which are fun for fantasy play are a nice added bonus.

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Comments: Our family loves Magformers. I got 2 boxes of the 30 piece sets for $28 each on Black Friday (down from $40) and I consider it a steal. I have a price watch set on camelcamelcamel.com in case they ever drop in price again, because I love giving these as gifts. I consider 60 to be a really good number for my 2 kids to play with simultaneously. I’m actually considering getting a third set when my baby gets bigger. One nice thing about the smaller 14 piece set though, is that they are so much fun and the price scales so well, that I consider the 14 piece set to be a good deal also. It’s easy to add to your collection without feeling like you’re losing money.

I should note that we also have Magnatiles and while they are also really fun and great for building spatial awareness skills, I prefer the Magformers over the Magnatiles at the moment. I may change my mind in the future, but at present my kids are 1, 3, and 5. I feel like the structures that one can make with the Magformers are more sturdy, which is great for young kids. They like building with the Magnatiles, but they sometimes get frustrated when they knock things over or try to pick them up only to have them fall apart. The Magnatiles are really better for making houses and buildings that stay on the floor, while the Magformers are better at making ball-like structures that you can carry around and manipulate. Whenever we go on a trip to visit relatives that don’t have toys, I always bring the Magformers. They can keep the kids occupied and playing nicely for up to an hour without fighting. I wish they came in a better box, because the one they come in is essentially useless. I keep our collection in a shoe box.

One feature of the Magformers that I should mention is that if you have two stacks of Magformers, they frequently repel or only very weakly attract. The magnets inside them can rotate to line up with each other for maximum attraction. However, if you have a stack of Magformers, the magnets are effectively locked in place. Therefore, to get all the Magformers to stick together, we lay them all flat on the floor not touching each other then “suck” them up one at a time into one big stack for each shape (square and triangle). My 3 year old loves doing this. It makes a very satisfying clicking noise. The Magnatiles do not have rotating magnets, but they seem to not have issues with repelling pieces as long as you align them properly.

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Comments: My 4 year old son has been riding his friend’s Strider bike occasionally since about his third birthday and he loves it. However, we decided to buy him a bike with training wheels for his 4th birthday instead of a Strider, because we thought it would be more economical, since the training wheels bike should last longer and is less expensive. Unfortunately, while he liked his “real” bike with pedals for a couple days, he tipped the whole thing over once by turning too sharply which has dampened his enthusiasm considerably. I wished we had just bought him the Strider instead. To fix our mistake, we bought our daughter a Strider for her 2nd birthday about a month later. She can “use” it, but she mostly just walks and refuses to sit down at this point. However, she’s happy to let her older brother use it most of the time and he’s barely gotten off of it for three days. (We let him ride inside as well as outside as long as he doesn’t run into things.) He’s improving so rapidly, that I don’t think he’ll need it for very long, then it can be passed down to his younger siblings when they’re ready. My daughter, at 2, might be too young to take full advantage of the bike, but I think it would make a great gift for a 3 year old. My friend’s 5 year old has been riding a real bike without training wheels since before his fourth birthday, which she attributes entirely to having a Strider when he was younger.

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Comments: My mom found these at Target and I think they’re awesome. You fill the paint brush with water (which, FYI, is really easy to do at a restaurant with a glass of water and a straw), you paint on them and all the colors show up, they dry off a few minutes later, turn white, and are ready to use again. We own 3 different ones (each with 4 pages to “paint”) and I always take them to restaurants with us. They do tend to warp with time, and the white has scratched off in some of the scenes, but we’ve been using them for about 6 months now and honestly the kids don’t like them any less than the day my mom gave them to us. They’re good for at least 10 minutes, which in a restaurant is usually just long enough. There are also several different versions to choose from (animals, vehicles, fairy tales, letters, and numbers).

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Comments: I cannot believe what a great deal these reusable sticker pads are. There are 5 scenes for around $5 and there a few different versions to choose from (habitats, vehicles, house, dress up, and princess). When I bought one, I thought it was going to be much smaller, so to be honest, they’re really not very good for the car, which is how I was intending to use them. However, I always bring them in my travel bag and if the wait time starts getting a little too long for the 1 and 4 year old (restaurants, waiting rooms, on the train, etc.), we pull these out and the time goes by quickly. I liked the one I bought so much, I bought 2 more. We have habitats, vehicles, and house. I especially recommend the habitats version for toddlers, as they love identifying animals at that age. After awhile the stickers start to lose their clinginess, but washing them with soap and water (not a baby wipe) seems to help.

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Comments: I bought this for my son for his 4th birthday based on how much he likes using my own point and shoot, and while my son LOVES it, I was pretty disappointed. However, my husband was not really comfortable with him using my $200 camera and we bought this one for only $35. I’m not impressed by the quality of photos it takes, but my son doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. He’s been playing photographer for 2 days straight. It does make a very satisfying “camera click” noise when it takes a picture and it has some really fun features on it like backgrounds and frames that are not available on my adult cameras. Also, it’s very easy to use. There is a menu that I can navigate to see all the options, but pretty much everything can be accessed in some way without the menu and the newly 4 year old figured out within a few minutes how to take and review pictures on his own. My main complaint is that with modest indoor lighting, the pictures frequently come out really blurry unless the subject is very still, but really I’m just spoiled by my DSLR with external flash and am also unsatisfied with my $200 point and shoot. One great thing about this camera for kids is that, unlike my point and shoot, my son does not need to hold the shutter button down halfway before pressing it all the way. This is really helpful, because although I tried explaining it to him, he has a lot of trouble with that concept when using my camera. Overall, seeing my son’s joy at using “his own camera”, I’m really happy with this purchase and there’s plenty of time later to upgrade when he’s older and more responsible.

Update: I’ve removed this from the best gifts for 3 year olds list, mainly because of how little it gets used. It frequently gets attention every time a new kid comes to play at our house, but it doesn’t get much repeat use. If you have a kid that is obsessed with taking pictures and not critical of the quality of the pictures, it’s not a bad “toy” investment, but the pictures are so awful, that it’s not great for teaching older kids how to use a camera. I think I’ll wait a couple more years, then maybe get my son an inexpensive real camera when he’s 7 or 8.

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Comments: Earlier this year I took my 3 year old to Barnes and Noble and told him to pick out whatever he wanted for under $20. We had a gift card. He chose this cupcake set among all the hundreds of option there. My 20 month old was so obsessed with the sealed box, she refused to let it go the whole way home, clinging to it in her car seat. When we got home, both my kids and their 4 year old cousin had a lot of fun playing with this set for nearly an hour. My son has played with it several days since then, alternating whose birthday it gets to be when he passes out the decorated cupcakes. It’s gotten so much use, I recently gave it as a gift at a birthday party we went to for a 2 year old. Online reviews seem to say the markers stain, but so far we’ve been able to keep the decorating to the cupcakes (and fingers). However, you’ll definitely want to switch out the markers that come with the set for washable markers if you have a wall scribbler.

Update: Oh my goodness has this set been popular in our house. Little girls, little boys, everyone wants to decorate cupcakes. Even my own kids who have “made us cupcakes” hundreds of times still pull them out once in awhile and present us with decorated cupcakes. They no longer look pristine, given that the markers wash off the icing, but not the wood, though our kids don’t care at all. I said it above, but it’s worth saying again. Watch out for kids that like to draw on walls, themselves, and other places you might not want colored on as the ink is not particularly washable.
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Comments: My son got this for his third birthday, and while he had a lot of fun with it, I really think it’s more appropriate for kids that are 4 and older. When he was three, my husband and I would set up the track for him and he would just let the cars go while standing on a stool next to the window where the ramp was suction cupped. Now that he is closer to 4, he enjoys putting boxes and pillows and things underneath to make it more bumpy and interesting. One important thing to mention is that I feel this toy is less exciting than the commercials make it seem (big surprise). In particular, we have a really hard time getting loops to work. However, it is still a ton of fun (especially if your kid is into Hot Wheels, like ours). According to other parents who have Hot Wheels tracks, this is much better. It’s another one of those toys that people have bought because they’ve seen their kids enjoying it at our house.

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