Shop UK Site 
SMART Toy Reviews by Real Moms!
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Dec 19, 2019
In a rush to fulfill holiday wish lists for family and friends, it can be challenging to find just the right gift for everyone on your list. Especially when it comes to gifting for kids, it often feels like the stars must align to find a gift that the kid loves AND you feel good giving.
This holiday season, we asked moms what matters to them when it comes to gifting for their children – and here’s what we found out:
- 87% of moms think it’s important that the toys they buy have an educational component
- 70% of moms think it’s important that the toys they buy have STEM or science component
- Half of moms are committed to buying more toys with an educational component this holiday than in previous years.
Dr. Kim Van Dusen, LMFT, RPT – owner/Founder of The Parentologist w/ Dr. Kim says “Play has so many benefits like building imagination, increasing language, communication, and social skills, lessening anxiety and depression, and learning at a more advanced education level! Finding toys that can stimulate a child’s brain while also having fun needs to be intentional from the parent to the child…Toys have so many benefits, especially if you pick the right ones!”
Learning Resources Pretend & Play Calculator Cash Register
Beverly Mitchell of Seventh Heaven fame gave herself this challenge… “Every year we try to find gifts that challenge their mind, they expand their knowledge. Toys that use to create, to learn, to engage. That is why I am such a big fan of Learning Resources, it is such a great website that has toys for every kind of kid, at every age. Whether your kids is a tinkerer, or a scientist, a baker, mathematician, or spelling champ, they have toys for your kid.
Coding Critters Rumble & Bumble
Yumology Science Sweets Kit
Engineering & Design Castle Set
Wreckergears
Alicia of @greeneclecticmama is a long-time fan of educational toys.“As an early childhood educator I know just how important play and STEM learning are for young kids. Learning through play can help children with problem solving, learning cause and effect, and building self-esteem. They learn how to compromise, share, and resolve conflict. Play is terrific for developing creativity, imagination, fine motor skills, and gross motor skills. These three awesome STEM toys from Learning Resources reinforce so many valuable skills. STEM learning can foster ingenuity and creativity, encourages experimentation, teamwork, adaptation, encourages knowledge application, and much more.”
Splashology!
MathLink Cubes
Beaker Creatures Alien Experiment Lab
Holly Bennett, better known as the creator of the @bennetttriplets, had this to say about gifting to multiples (and her guidance applies to any siblings!):
“The truth is that while my triplets have similarities, they are also very different. One of my sons is currently very scientific-minded. He was just toddling when he first fixated and really understood how magnets work. My daughter has always been into helping me in the kitchen, never missing a chance to bake up something delicious. My other son has such diverse interests, but he is currently fixated on his school work and is constantly building and constructing things, so I see the little engineer in him coming out.”
Bennetttriplets' Instagram
“Have you ever heard of STEM toys? I hadn't until recently! STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math and although they look just as fun as regular toys, they’re actually tools that help kids develop their abilities while they have fun and learn.”
Related Posts You Might Enjoy
Posted on Dec 14, 2022
Top 5 STEM Stocking Stuffers!
READ MORE
Top 5 STEM Stocking Stuffers!
It's never too early to introduce science, technology, engineering and math into your child's life, and we make it fun! The benefits of STEM on early childhood development is a true gift to give this season. Check out these awesome Learning Resources STEM Stocking Stuffers for your little learners!
Build three different vehicles from just one set of mix-and-match parts with the 1-2-3 Build It! Rocket-Train-Helicopter . Chunky, easy-to-handle parts let kids build and rebuild on their own before embarking on imaginative journeys to far-off destinations—blast off to distant stars aboard a rocket, fly through the air above a make-believe city with a helicopter, or chug down the tracks toward the station with a train.
Get ready for endless fun with our famous Mathlink Cubes! High-quality plastic cubes measure ¾” each and come in 10 bright colors. These stackable cubes are easy for little hands to connect and twist apart. Great for counting to 100 by ones and tens, grouping, and one-to-one correspondence. These cubes are also great for building, sequencing, and patterns!
Drivers, start your learning engines! Shape, color, and number recognition skills zoom around the track, past the checkered flag, and into your toy box with the Speedy Shapes Racers from Learning Resources. Shaped like old-fashioned racing roadsters, these five colorful race-cars combine skill-building lessons about shapes, colors, and numbers with fun imaginative play opportunities.
Which creature will you discover? Turn your kids’ love of collectible toys into a real-world science adventure with the Beaker Creatures Reactor Pod from Learning Resources. Within each mysterious Reactor Pod lurks one of 35 Beaker Creatures. They are tiny alien travelers from five planets who’ve come to Earth in search of learning fun. To discover which creature you’ve got, drop the pod into a container of water, watch the bubbling reaction, and extract the creature within! Get your pods at Amazon!!Single Pod - https://amzn.to/2URmjK0 2-Pack - https://amzn.to/2ECGkPw 6-Pack - https://amzn.to/2Lm4MoT 
1-2-3 Build It! Rocket-Train-Helicopter
Build three different vehicles from just one set of mix-and-match parts with the 1-2-3 Build It! Rocket-Train-Helicopter . Chunky, easy-to-handle parts let kids build and rebuild on their own before embarking on imaginative journeys to far-off destinations—blast off to distant stars aboard a rocket, fly through the air above a make-believe city with a helicopter, or chug down the tracks toward the station with a train.Mathlink Cubes, Set of 100
Get ready for endless fun with our famous Mathlink Cubes! High-quality plastic cubes measure ¾” each and come in 10 bright colors. These stackable cubes are easy for little hands to connect and twist apart. Great for counting to 100 by ones and tens, grouping, and one-to-one correspondence. These cubes are also great for building, sequencing, and patterns!Speedy Shapes Racers
Drivers, start your learning engines! Shape, color, and number recognition skills zoom around the track, past the checkered flag, and into your toy box with the Speedy Shapes Racers from Learning Resources. Shaped like old-fashioned racing roadsters, these five colorful race-cars combine skill-building lessons about shapes, colors, and numbers with fun imaginative play opportunities.Smart Snacks Number Pops
Build number and fine-motor skills with these irresistible ice cream pops! Perfect for practicing with numbers 1–10. Great for color matching too! Each pop features a number of colored dots and a removable cover that has a corresponding number. Children are able to practice counting, number recognition and color matching. This hands-on toy also works to strengthen fine-motor skills and hand eye coordination.
Beaker Creatures Reactor Pods
Which creature will you discover? Turn your kids’ love of collectible toys into a real-world science adventure with the Beaker Creatures Reactor Pod from Learning Resources. Within each mysterious Reactor Pod lurks one of 35 Beaker Creatures. They are tiny alien travelers from five planets who’ve come to Earth in search of learning fun. To discover which creature you’ve got, drop the pod into a container of water, watch the bubbling reaction, and extract the creature within! Get your pods at Amazon!!Single Pod - https://amzn.to/2URmjK0 2-Pack - https://amzn.to/2ECGkPw 6-Pack - https://amzn.to/2Lm4MoT Happy Holidays!
Save it for later!READ MORE
Posted on Feb 25, 2019
Beaker Creatures Easter: Pod Hunt & Relay Race!
READ MORE
Beaker Creatures Easter: Pod Hunt & Relay Race!
Fill Your Easter Basket with Fun and Learning – Make it a Beaker Creature Easter!
As the old song goes, hippity hoppity, hippity hoppity, Easter’s on its way! In addition to dyed eggs, oodles of candy, and treasures from the Target dollar bin, this year, slip some science into your kiddos’ baskets with Beaker Creatures!Beaker Creature pods are the perfect addition to your Easter egg hunt – they’re even the perfect shape! At our house, the bunny always brings a mix of real eggs and plastic ones filled with treats and hides them in the backyard. This spring, I’m pretty sure he’ll also be hiding Beaker Creature pods, too!
Once your little ones have rounded up all their Easter goodies, it’s time to turn your kitchen into a springtime science lab! Simply set out several glass bowls, a pitcher of water, some vinegar, and a few left-over Easter egg dye tabs and get ready to experiment.
Here are a few things to try:
Fill a bowl half-full of water (these guys really fizz up – you might even place the bowls on a cookie sheet to contain any overflow) and let your little one drop a Beaker Creature in. The eggs will foam and fizzle until they’re dissolved. Once revealed, a hidden capsule holding an adorable Beaker Creature appears!
Have the kids drop their Beaker Creatures into separate bowls of water and race to see whose pod dissolves first!
Compare and contrast the results of dissolving two creatures in side-by-side bowls of water and vinegar. Does one dissolve faster?
Next up, color-changing fun!
Drop an Easter egg dye tab in a bowl of vinegar and stir to dissolve. Examine the color of a Beaker Creature pod and help your kids make a prediction as to what color the liquid in the bowl might turn when dropped into the bowl of dye. Try again, with a different color dye and a different colored pod. You can even mix the foam colors together to create fizzy new shades.When you’re done experimenting, check out the classification cards each Beaker Creature came with. Help your kids examine their Creatures’ characteristics in order to identify and classify them into one of five fun worlds. Review the amazing, real-world science facts on the included mini-poster, then see if your little bunnies can answer the quiz questions.
When the science is done, continue the fun with some Beaker Creature crafting! Visit www.BeakerCreatures.com to learn more about each of the five Beaker Creature worlds, then browse our blog for inspirational ideas, tips, and tricks for creating your own, home-made habitats for these adorable alien friends.
And there you have it! An easy way to slip some science into your Easter basket! With 35 different critters to collect and a brand-new series releasing this year, Beaker Creatures will keep your kids busy all spring and summer, too!
Save it for later!
READ MORE
Posted on Nov 19, 2018
Top 10 Black Friday Toys! Looking for the best learning toys to give your little coders, scientists, doctors and explorers this holiday season? Look no more! Here are the Top 10 Learning Resources toys to buy this Black Friday! Check them out on Amazon or at our website!Beaker Creatures™ Liquid Reactor Super Lab
Botley™ the Coding Robot Activity Set
Meet Botley, the code to fun! As the newest member of the Learning Resources family, Botley is here to introduce coding in an easy, friendly way. Children as young as 5 can learn to code with Botley, and with his advanced features, he’ll grow with them for many play filled years to come. Botley is ready to use right out of the box – he’ll have kids coding in minutes. And that’s not all, Botley is 100% screen free and includes a 77-piece activity set – the only robot to offer that!Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog™
Our hedgehog lost his quills, and only your little ones can help him get them back! Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog helps kids build up hand muscles and fine motor skills as they replace the chunky, peg-shaped “quills” within the holes that dot the smiling hedgehog’s back. The learning doesn’t end there—Spike's colorful quills also lend themselves well to lessons in counting, sorting, and color identification skills. Kids can arrange the quills by warm or cool colors, work on sequences and patterns by alternating colors, or count up the quills with the help of numbers printed on the hedgehog’s back. Once playtime is over, Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog is a snap to clean up—each piece is made of plastic that can be easily wiped clean, and the quills stow snugly inside the hedgehog’s body, which adds simplicity to storage too.Gears! Gears! Gears!®Machines in Motion
These machines really move! With the Gears! Gears! Gears! Machines in Motion from Learning Resources, kids engineer their own playtime fun with the help of creative, open-ended building activities. Using the included instructions, kids can build their own versions of numerous different interactive machines and vehicles, many of which incorporate special parts including a wrecking ball, chains, pulleys, and wheels. Turn out a tank with its own helicopter propeller, or craft a complex contraption that spins with the twist of a lever. 
Spin your way into geography with this Puzzle Globe, which highlights landmarks and animals! Each puzzle piece (continent) fits into one hole on the globe to make it easy for little ones to place. All 7 continents are represented (6 continent puzzle pieces plus stationary Antarctica).
Features enough medical tools for the whole junior surgical staff to operate! Made from sturdy plastic, this set features a battery operated stethoscope, and realistic sounding cell phone. Provides the perfect way to ease children’s anxieties about doctor visits. Plastic carrying case has a place for everything and provides great storage.
The learning express is pulling into the station! Send number, color, and shape recognition skills chugging down the tracks with the Count & Color Choo Choo from Learning Resources. Driven by a friendly conductor figure that plugs right into the engine, this fun interactive train set pulls a load of learning lessons thanks to its cargo of removable blocks that come in different numbers, shapes, and colors. Kids can sort the blocks by shape and color, count up the total number found in the train, or build fine motor skills while loading the blocks back into their rightful train cars.
This award-winning cash register is the perfect addition to any pretend store! Encourage beginning math and calculator skills while providing lots of opportunities for imaginative play. Features a built-in solar calculator that helps familiarize children with the use of a calculator. They’ll also learn currency denomination and have fun handling life-size money. Large buttons on the keypad are easy for little hands to press and the cash drawer makes a “cha-ching” sound when it opens.
Introduce kids to angles, trajectories, and other early physics fundamentals with the Crashapult STEM Challenge from Learning Resources. This hands-on activity set challenges kids to build and complete high-flying obstacle courses designed around core STEM concepts. After setting up their catapults, kids send the launch balls flying off walls, over obstacles, and toward the set’s included hoop target, funnel, or goal cup. Along the way, they’ll have to use their own trial-and-error, engineering, and critical thinking skills to make the adjustments to placement and force necessary to successfully complete the included challenges.
This deluxe market set combines some of our best New Sprouts® food items from an amazingly realistic T-bone steak to enticing fresh produce. Unlike other play food our New Sprouts® are easy to grip and won’t collapse. Can’t decide what New Sprouts® to get? This set is a sure bet for hours of inspired play. 
READ MORE
Top 10 Black Friday Toys! Looking for the best learning toys to give your little coders, scientists, doctors and explorers this holiday season? Look no more! Here are the Top 10 Learning Resources toys to buy this Black Friday! Check them out on Amazon or at our website!
We also have a very special announcement! 4 of the items on this list are Toy of the Year Finalists!! Please vote for your favorite at
Beaker Creatures™ Liquid Reactor Super Lab
TOTY NOMINEE FOR COLLECTIBLE OF THE YEAR!
AGES 5+
Extract, Identify, Explore!
It’s a colorful bubbling creature reaction! Extract the Beaker Creatures from the mysterious Reactor Pods with the Beaker Creatures Liquid Reactor Super Lab from Learning Resources. After placing one of two included Reactor Pods within the Super Lab’s center chamber, kids send water whirling through the tubes with the help of two Hydroplungers, filling the chamber and triggering the amazing reaction. Once the reaction ends, kids can extract their Beaker Creatures collectibles and start classifying!
Botley™ the Coding Robot Activity Set
TOTY NOMINEE FOR MOST INNOVATIVE TOY OF THE YEAR
AGES 5+
Meet Botley, the code to fun! As the newest member of the Learning Resources family, Botley is here to introduce coding in an easy, friendly way. Children as young as 5 can learn to code with Botley, and with his advanced features, he’ll grow with them for many play filled years to come. Botley is ready to use right out of the box – he’ll have kids coding in minutes. And that’s not all, Botley is 100% screen free and includes a 77-piece activity set – the only robot to offer that!Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog™
TOTY NOMINEE FOR INFANT/TODDLER TOY OF THE YEAR!
AGES 2 AND UNDER
Our hedgehog lost his quills, and only your little ones can help him get them back! Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog helps kids build up hand muscles and fine motor skills as they replace the chunky, peg-shaped “quills” within the holes that dot the smiling hedgehog’s back. The learning doesn’t end there—Spike's colorful quills also lend themselves well to lessons in counting, sorting, and color identification skills. Kids can arrange the quills by warm or cool colors, work on sequences and patterns by alternating colors, or count up the quills with the help of numbers printed on the hedgehog’s back. Once playtime is over, Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog is a snap to clean up—each piece is made of plastic that can be easily wiped clean, and the quills stow snugly inside the hedgehog’s body, which adds simplicity to storage too.Gears! Gears! Gears!®Machines in Motion
TOTY NOMINEE FOR CONSTRUCTION TOY OF THE YEAR
AGES 4+
These machines really move! With the Gears! Gears! Gears! Machines in Motion from Learning Resources, kids engineer their own playtime fun with the help of creative, open-ended building activities. Using the included instructions, kids can build their own versions of numerous different interactive machines and vehicles, many of which incorporate special parts including a wrecking ball, chains, pulleys, and wheels. Turn out a tank with its own helicopter propeller, or craft a complex contraption that spins with the twist of a lever. Puzzle Globe
AGES 3+
Spin your way into geography with this Puzzle Globe, which highlights landmarks and animals! Each puzzle piece (continent) fits into one hole on the globe to make it easy for little ones to place. All 7 continents are represented (6 continent puzzle pieces plus stationary Antarctica).Pretend & Play® Doctor Set
AGES 3+
Features enough medical tools for the whole junior surgical staff to operate! Made from sturdy plastic, this set features a battery operated stethoscope, and realistic sounding cell phone. Provides the perfect way to ease children’s anxieties about doctor visits. Plastic carrying case has a place for everything and provides great storage.Count & Color Choo Choo
AGES 2+
The learning express is pulling into the station! Send number, color, and shape recognition skills chugging down the tracks with the Count & Color Choo Choo from Learning Resources. Driven by a friendly conductor figure that plugs right into the engine, this fun interactive train set pulls a load of learning lessons thanks to its cargo of removable blocks that come in different numbers, shapes, and colors. Kids can sort the blocks by shape and color, count up the total number found in the train, or build fine motor skills while loading the blocks back into their rightful train cars.Pretend & Play® Calculator Cash Register
AGES 3+
This award-winning cash register is the perfect addition to any pretend store! Encourage beginning math and calculator skills while providing lots of opportunities for imaginative play. Features a built-in solar calculator that helps familiarize children with the use of a calculator. They’ll also learn currency denomination and have fun handling life-size money. Large buttons on the keypad are easy for little hands to press and the cash drawer makes a “cha-ching” sound when it opens.Crashapult™ STEM Challenge
AGES 5+
Introduce kids to angles, trajectories, and other early physics fundamentals with the Crashapult STEM Challenge from Learning Resources. This hands-on activity set challenges kids to build and complete high-flying obstacle courses designed around core STEM concepts. After setting up their catapults, kids send the launch balls flying off walls, over obstacles, and toward the set’s included hoop target, funnel, or goal cup. Along the way, they’ll have to use their own trial-and-error, engineering, and critical thinking skills to make the adjustments to placement and force necessary to successfully complete the included challenges.New Sprouts® Deluxe Market Set
AGES 2+
This deluxe market set combines some of our best New Sprouts® food items from an amazingly realistic T-bone steak to enticing fresh produce. Unlike other play food our New Sprouts® are easy to grip and won’t collapse. Can’t decide what New Sprouts® to get? This set is a sure bet for hours of inspired play. Happy shopping!
Save it for later! READ MORE
