The science of what toddlers need to move, grow and think, and which toys are genuinely worth their place on the shelf.
The best toys for an 18-month-old are those that invite the whole body to participate: pull-along animals, wooden skittles, stacking toys, shape-sorters and open-ended wooden objects that respond to pushing, pulling, carrying and throwing. These are not simply amusements. They are the primary tools through which a toddler at this age builds balance, coordination, strength and, crucially, the cognitive structures that underpin everything else. If you are wondering whether to worry about how much your child wants to run, lug things across the room and knock things over, the short answer is: do not. The longer answer follows.
Both the World Health Organization and the UK Chief Medical Officer recommend that children aged one to three accumulate at least 180 minutes of physical activity every day, spread across waking hours. That figure is not about fitness in any adult sense. It reflects the understanding that large-muscle movement is the medium through which toddlers learn. The neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp spent decades mapping what he called the PLAY system in young mammals, a dedicated circuitry in the brain that drives the urge to move, chase, tumble and engage. In an 18-month-old who wants to pull everything behind them and bowl things over, you are not watching naughtiness. You are watching biology do exactly what it should.
What the WHO recommends
The World Health Organization advises that toddlers aged 1 to 3 should have at least 180 minutes of physical activity of any intensity spread throughout the day. Active play with engaging, responsive objects is the most natural way to meet this guidance without a timetable or a plan.
Around 18 months, most toddlers are walking with growing confidence, beginning to attempt something approximating a run, bending to retrieve objects from the floor, carrying things whilst moving, and taking their first experimental throws and kicks. Each of these achievements represents not just a physical milestone but a cognitive one. Jean Piaget's account of the sensorimotor stage is worth holding in mind here: at this age, thinking and doing are not separate activities. Physical action is the mode of thought. Your child is not playing and then learning. The playing is the learning.
It is also worth saying plainly that milestone timing varies considerably between children, and that a rich play environment supports development without creating pressure. A child who is offered interesting things to push, pull, carry and aim at will naturally practise the movements they are ready for. The toys do not need to be labelled educational to do educational work. They simply need to be responsive, appropriately sized and genuinely engaging.
A wooden pull-along animal is a deceptively simple object. It is also one of the more richly purposeful toys available at this age. Walking whilst towing something behind you is a different physical challenge from walking unencumbered. The child must manage balance and forward momentum whilst also attending to the cord, the object behind them and the changing terrain of a sitting-room floor. Spatial awareness, bilateral coordination and proprioceptive learning are all at work simultaneously.
Jeffrey Trawick-Smith's research on high-yield toys found that objects which respond visibly to a child's movement, producing sound, motion or a satisfying visual change, sustain engagement and encourage repeated physical practice far more effectively than passive objects. A pull-along that wobbles, clacks or has moving parts as it travels rewards the child for walking and keeps them going. Beyond the physical, these toys invite narrative: the child is not just walking, but leading something somewhere. That shift, from locomotion to story, brings language and imaginative play into the same moment as the gross motor work. You can find Jaques of London's range of wooden toys, including pull-along options, at the wooden toys collection.
There are few greater satisfactions available to an 18-month-old than the crash of a well-aimed bowl scattering a set of skittles. That pleasure is not incidental. It is the developmental signal that something important has just happened. Throwing and bowling movements engage the shoulder girdle, develop bilateral coordination and require the eyes and hands to track a moving object through space. These are demanding physical skills, and they are being practised with enormous enthusiasm.
The work of Anthony Pellegrini on physical play and executive function suggests that the planning involved in aiming at a target, however rudimentary, introduces the earliest forms of self-regulation and goal-directed behaviour. Setting up, aiming, throwing and resetting is also a closed loop of cause and effect that builds persistence and emotional resilience. The child who rolls the ball, watches the skittles fall, and goes to stand them up again for another attempt is practising something that will serve them well for years. Browse Jaques of London's skittles range at the skittles collection.
Pellegrini on play and self-regulation
Anthony Pellegrini's research consistently links physical play involving targets and repeated attempts to the development of executive function in young children. Aiming a ball at skittles is, developmentally speaking, early practice in planning, attention and persistence.
Shape-sorters and stacking rings ask more of a toddler's body than they might appear to. The child must bend, reach, grasp, rotate and press with real force. The integration of fine and gross motor skills in a single focused activity is precisely what makes these toys so valuable at 18 months. Alison Gopnik's framing of children as active scientists is useful here: every failed attempt to post the wrong shape is not a mistake but a hypothesis tested. The child is gathering data, adjusting their theory, and trying again.
Lev Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development, the space between what a child can do alone and what they can achieve with gentle support, describes exactly the relationship a good stacking toy creates. A task that is just beyond easy reach but achievable with effort, or a quiet word of encouragement from a nearby adult, builds both competence and confidence. Stacking also develops proprioceptive awareness directly: the child learns how much force to apply, how to balance one piece on another, and when to release. These are not trivial physical lessons. Browse the educational toys collection for shape-sorters and stacking toys suited to this age.
A smooth wooden block can be a brick, a telephone, a seat for a toy bear, a loaf of bread, a rolling pin or a stepping stone, depending on the hour and the mood of the child holding it. This is the defining quality of a genuinely open-ended toy, and it is one that wooden objects lend themselves to particularly well. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff's research on playful learning repeatedly demonstrates that toys with fewer prescribed functions draw more language, more creative play and longer sustained sessions from young children than those that do only one thing.
Carly Dauch's research on toy quantity adds a complementary finding: fewer, richer objects produce deeper, more sustained play than larger collections of simpler items. Wood itself contributes something that research supports and parents often sense intuitively. Its weight, warmth and solidity give toddlers physical feedback that lightweight plastic cannot replicate. Maria Montessori observed in her earliest work that children respond to objects which offer real sensory information, not approximations of it. A wooden toy in the hand tells the child something true about mass, texture and resistance.
Jenny Radesky and Sheri Madigan have both produced research raising concerns about screen exposure in very young children, and their findings sit alongside clear guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization recommending minimal or no screen time for children under two. The case for physical, hands-on play objects is not merely nostalgic. It reflects a substantial body of evidence about what supports healthy development in the earliest years.
Durability is worth considering not only on environmental grounds but developmental ones. A toy that survives from 18 months to four years meets the child differently at each stage. A set of wooden skittles is a balance and carrying toy at 18 months, a target game at three, and a family game at five. Jaques of London has been making traditional games and wooden toys since 1795, and the designs that have endured have done so because they grow with the children who play with them. Browse the traditional games collection or explore the full range at jaqueslondon.co.uk.
AAP and WHO on screen time
Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization recommend avoiding screen-based entertainment for children under 24 months, with the exception of video calls. Physical toys that invite movement, touch and cause-and-effect exploration are the evidence-based alternative.
Entirely normal, and worth celebrating even when it is inconvenient. The throwing impulse at this age is driven by the same exploratory circuitry that Panksepp identified in the PLAY system: the child is learning about force, trajectory, distance and cause and effect through every launch. The most effective response is not suppression but redirection. Offer objects that are designed to be thrown or bowled, such as soft balls or a wooden skittles set, and designate a space where throwing is welcome. This meets the developmental need, builds the relevant motor skills, and preserves the crockery.
The honest answer is that safety depends far more on manufacturing standards, finish quality and age-appropriate design than on material alone. A well-made wooden toy from a reputable maker, finished with non-toxic paint or oil and sized appropriately for the age group, is an excellent choice. Wood does offer some practical advantages at 18 months: it is less likely to shatter into sharp fragments under determined treatment, and its weight and texture provide the proprioceptive feedback that supports motor development. What matters most is choosing from makers with clear safety standards and a track record, rather than treating either material as inherently superior in all circumstances.
Dauch's research on toy quantity offers a useful starting point: children in environments with fewer toys tended to play with each object for significantly longer and with greater creativity than those surrounded by large collections. Novelty wears off quickly at this age, but responsiveness does not. A toy that changes when the child acts on it, one that falls over, makes a sound or can be reconfigured, holds attention far better than a passive one. Open-ended wooden objects, stacking toys and cause-and-effect toys such as skittles all benefit from this quality. Rotating toys in and out of reach, rather than leaving everything available at once, also extends engagement considerably.
A set of wooden skittles is a strong answer to this question. It occupies very little storage space, requires no fixed installation and can be played with in a corridor or a sitting room. It supports throwing and aiming, which develop shoulder girdle strength, eye-hand coordination and bilateral movement. It introduces the earliest forms of planning and self-regulation through target play. It offers immediate cause-and-effect satisfaction, which builds persistence. And it grows with the child: at 18 months it is a sensory and motor toy; by three it is a game with intent; by five it is something the whole family can play together. For wooden toys suited to smaller homes, the wooden toys collection and the educational toys collection are both worth exploring.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.