The right toys at the right moment can transform a toddler's physical confidence, balance and coordination, and the evidence points clearly to which kinds work best.
The single most effective category of toy for building gross motor skills in children under five is one that demands whole-body movement: things children push, pull, roll, throw, carry, knock down and chase. Balls, skittles, ride-on toys, hoops and stacking sets that tumble are not decorative additions to a playroom; they are, in the language of developmental science, the primary tools through which large-muscle groups are recruited, trained and refined. The research is unambiguous. Neuropsychologist Jaak Panksepp demonstrated that vigorous physical play activates neural circuits involved in emotional regulation and learning readiness, while Jeffrey Trawick-Smith's TIMPANI studies found that open-ended, physically engaging toys produced the highest-quality play behaviour in children across the preschool years. If you are looking for a direct answer, it is this: choose toys that make your child move, and choose them in materials robust enough to survive that movement honestly.
Gross motor skills are the large-muscle abilities that allow children to hold their heads up, roll over, crawl, stand, walk, run, jump, balance, climb and throw. They form the physical scaffold on which everything else is built. Adele Diamond's work on executive function confirms that physical competence in early childhood correlates strongly with later cognitive performance, partly because the cerebellum, which coordinates movement, is deeply connected to the prefrontal cortex. In short, a child who learns to balance on a wobble board is doing something genuinely good for their thinking brain, not merely their body.
Movement is the curriculum of infancy. When a two-year-old bends to pick up a ball, launches it forward and then runs after it, they are practising trunk rotation, hip extension, shoulder mechanics and dynamic balance in a single unrehearsed sequence. Vygotsky described play as creating a zone of proximal development, a space in which children attempt things slightly beyond their current ability. Physical play does exactly this in the motor domain: each throw that goes wide, each stack that topples and each skittle that refuses to fall teaches the nervous system to calibrate differently next time. Piaget would call this the cycle of assimilation and accommodation, and it is precisely why repetition, far from being boring, is the mechanism of skill consolidation.
What the Research Says · Trawick-Smith & TIMPANI
Jeffrey Trawick-Smith's TIMPANI project evaluated dozens of toy types across sustained periods of preschool play and found consistently that toys demanding physical engagement, particularly those with variable outcomes (a ball that bounces unpredictably, skittles that fall differently each time), produced the longest and most cognitively complex play episodes. Open-ended physical toys, the research concluded, support both motor and intellectual development simultaneously.
Several categories stand out in both the developmental literature and in two centuries of practical experience at Jaques of London. Skittles and bowling sets ask a child to aim, release and observe consequences, recruiting shoulder girdle, core stability and hand-eye coordination in combination. Balls of varying sizes encourage throwing, kicking, rolling and catching at progressively increasing challenge levels. Push-along and pull-along toys support the transitional walker who needs both confidence and something to anchor their attention as they move through space. Hoops develop spatial awareness and bilateral coordination. Ring-toss games ask for controlled release and judgement of distance. Each of these toy types has remained in continuous production not through sentiment but because they work.
Browse Jaques Educational Toys for Under-5sThe question of material is not purely aesthetic. Wooden toys are typically heavier per unit of size than their plastic equivalents, and that additional weight is developmentally meaningful. Carrying, lifting and controlling a denser object recruits more muscle fibre and provides richer proprioceptive feedback, the sensory information muscles and joints send to the brain about position, weight and effort. Patricia Kuhl's research on sensory richness in early learning suggests that the more information an object provides to a child's nervous system, the more thoroughly it is encoded. A solid wooden skittle that falls with a satisfying weight and sound teaches a child more about force and consequence than a lightweight plastic version that skitters without resistance. Wooden toys also tend to have fewer built-in electronic responses, which means the child supplies the narrative and the movement, keeping agency, and therefore learning, in their hands.
What the Research Says · Sosa
Researcher Anna Sosa's findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, demonstrated that traditional toys without electronic features produced significantly more parent-child vocalisation and turn-taking than battery-operated alternatives. The principle extends naturally to gross motor play: toys that do not perform for the child invite the child to perform themselves, which is where motor development actually occurs.
The outdoor environment offers what no indoor space can fully replicate: variable terrain, natural resistance, unpredictable light and the sense of scale that comes from open space. Richard Louv coined the phrase "nature-deficit disorder" to describe what children lose when outdoor experience is reduced, and both Sandseter and Brussoni have published compelling evidence that moderate physical risk in outdoor play, climbing, running on uneven ground, launching objects, contributes to resilience and motor competence rather than undermining safety. Garden games such as croquet, skittles on grass and outdoor ring-toss extend the range of movement patterns available to a child. Grass changes the behaviour of a ball. Wind introduces unpredictability. Uneven ground demands constant micro-adjustments in balance. These variables, far from making play harder, make it richer and more educative.
Explore Jaques Outdoor Games for FamiliesThe science of early learning makes one thing repeatedly plain: adult presence transforms toy play. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff describe "guided play" as the sweet spot between free play and direct instruction, a mode in which a caregiver participates without directing and follows the child's lead without disappearing. When a parent rolls a ball back, narrates what they see ("you kicked it so hard it went all the way to the fence"), or introduces a gentle challenge ("can you knock all six down this time?"), they are providing exactly the scaffolding Vygotsky described. Dana Suskind's Thirty Million Words project demonstrated that the quantity and quality of language surrounding an activity enriches the cognitive benefit of that activity. Physical play is no exception: talking through movement, naming body parts, counting skittles and describing trajectories makes motor play simultaneously a language experience.
Age-appropriate challenge is the governing principle. In the first year, the priority is toys that motivate reaching, rolling and tummy-time effort: lightweight balls with gentle texture and simple push toys for the newly upright child. Between twelve and twenty-four months, walkers, pull-alongs and low-set throwing targets build confidence in the toddler still negotiating the basic miracle of bipedal movement. From two to three years, skittles, hoops and larger balls introduce aim, force modulation and the joyful unpredictability of things that fall down and must be set up again. From three to five, more complex outdoor games, croquet mallets held properly, ring-toss at increasing distances and small-sided ball games introduce sustained attention, turn-taking and strategic thinking alongside the continuing physical work. At every stage, look for toys that are open-ended, durable, appropriately weighted and safe to use without constant supervision.
What the Research Says · UK Chief Medical Officers
The UK Chief Medical Officers' physical activity guidelines state that children under five who are capable of walking should be physically active for at least three hours per day, spread across the day, and that this activity should include energetic play. For children not yet walking, the recommendation is to encourage movement through floor-based play for at least thirty minutes daily. These are not aspirational targets; they are the minimum associated with healthy development.
The most reliable strategy is to introduce toys with unpredictable trajectories, because children instinctively chase things they cannot fully control. A soft ball rolled across an open floor, a set of wooden skittles positioned at the far end of a room, or a ring-toss set placed a few steps further away than feels comfortable will draw a reluctant mover into action without any coercion. The goal is to make movement feel like a consequence of curiosity rather than a directive from an adult. Joining in yourself is the single most powerful lever available to any parent.
Developmental milestones are ranges, not fixed points, and variation is entirely normal. Most children begin to throw with some directional intention around eighteen months. A two-handed catch with a large ball typically emerges between three and four years. Kicking a stationary ball with purpose appears for most children around two years, while kicking a rolling ball requires the additional skill of timing and usually consolidates closer to four. If a child is significantly outside these ranges and showing difficulty across multiple motor tasks, a conversation with a health visitor or paediatrician is worthwhile, but isolated variation in a single skill is rarely cause for concern.
Yes, with appropriate sizing and weighting. For children between eighteen months and three years, the aim is not accuracy but the broad motor experience of bending, positioning, releasing and observing cause and effect. Large, lightweight wooden skittles that topple easily are ideal at this stage. The act of setting them back up, often more motivating than knocking them down, provides additional practice in fine and gross motor coordination, spatial arrangement and sustained attention. Jaques skittle sets are designed with proportions that make this achievable and satisfying for very young children without requiring precision they have not yet developed.
The UK Chief Medical Officers recommend a minimum of three hours of physical activity daily for children who can walk, a figure echoed in guidance from the World Health Organization. The good news is that this does not mean three continuous hours of structured exercise. It accumulates across the day through free play in the garden, trips to the park, dancing in the kitchen, chasing the dog and, yes, setting up and knocking down skittles twenty times before lunch. The evidence suggests that spreading movement throughout the day, rather than concentrating it in one session, is associated with better sleep, mood regulation and motor development in children under five.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.