Development doesn't follow a script, but it does follow a sequence. Here is what the research says about play, toys and screens at each stage of the first five years.
In the first twelve months, every waking experience is play. The brain is building at a rate of one million neural connections per second. Touch, sound, sight, taste and smell are all data, and every physical interaction with the world is a learning event of extraordinary magnitude.
The research in one sentence
"At no other point in life will experience shape the brain as profoundly as in the first twelve months. Every face, every touch, every sound is architecture.", Harvard Center on the Developing Child
Between 12 and 24 months, mobility transforms play. The newly walking child is a scientist, testing gravity, distance, containment, cause and effect with relentless energy. This is the year of the pull-along toy, the stacking set, and the first imaginative play. Language is accelerating.
The research in one sentence
"The walking child who pulls a toy behind them is not just playing, they are building spatial awareness, causal reasoning, gross motor planning, and language simultaneously. One toy, four developmental domains.", Dr. Sheridan, From Birth to Five Years
Between two and three, the average child's vocabulary grows from 50 words to 900. Pretend play begins. The child can hold a story in their head, assign roles, negotiate with peers, and regulate increasingly complex emotions. This is when the type of toys matters most.
Small World Play Sets
Farm, forest, village, open-ended narrative play at its richest. Language, imagination, emotional processing.
Sorting & Matching Games
Executive function, working memory, classification. Montessori-aligned and joyful.
Between three and five, children develop the capacity for complex rule-based play, genuine cooperative games, and extended pretend narratives that last days. This is when school readiness, executive function, emotional regulation, empathy, early literacy and numeracy, is actively constructed through play.
Life Cycle Educational Sets
Science, sequencing, narrative. The butterfly life cycle in wood, a school curriculum in a box.
First Wooden Games
Turn-taking, rule-following, winning and losing gracefully. The social curriculum of childhood.
Jaques London has been making toys for the first five years since 1795. Every product is designed with developmental purpose, not just to look beautiful, but to do the job that play science says it should.