A walk through the shelves of a nineteenth-century toyshop reveals that the best playthings have barely changed, and the ones that endured are precisely the ones developmental science now recommends.
A Victorian toyshop stocked wooden skittles, spinning tops, building bricks, dissected puzzles, hoops, cup-and-ball games, simple board games and painted picture blocks. Many of those objects are still made today, still developmentally sound and still wholly appropriate for a two-year-old. That is not nostalgia speaking; it is the result of two centuries of parental observation and, more recently, of peer-reviewed research confirming what Victorian nurseries intuited: the plainer the toy, the richer the play.
If you are choosing a gift for a toddler right now, the short answer is this: wooden skittles, stacking toys, simple puzzles, spinning tops and traditional table games with large pieces are all available today in forms that meet modern safety standards, and all of them appear on the short list of toy types that researchers consistently associate with language growth, physical coordination and sustained imaginative engagement. The Victorians were not always right about childhood, but on this particular question they were ahead of their time.
Walk into a well-stocked London toyshop in, say, 1870 and you would find the shelves arranged much as a thoughtful parent might arrange a playroom today. Wooden hoops for rolling, sets of painted skittles, spinning tops in various sizes, cup-and-ball toys, dissected map puzzles (the Victorian forerunner of the jigsaw), alphabet and picture bricks, simple card games and wooden soldiers. Jaques of London, established in 1795 and now the world's oldest games maker, supplied many such shops, including the sets of croquet that became a Victorian garden staple and the Staunton chess pieces registered in 1849 that remain the international standard today.
What is striking, viewed through a modern lens, is how many of these objects required the child to supply the imagination. A spinning top asks you to notice motion, cause and effect, balance. A set of skittles asks you to aim, to gauge distance, to cheer when they fall and to reset them when they do not. Picture bricks ask you to rotate, compare and persist. None of these toys tells a child what to feel or think. That openness, it turns out, is their greatest virtue.
What the research says about open-ended toys
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff, whose work on playful learning has shaped early-years policy on both sides of the Atlantic, argue consistently that toys which do less allow children to do more. When a toy provides its own lights, sounds and narration, the child becomes a spectator. When a toy is a smooth wooden block or a set of skittles, the child becomes the author.
Victorian toy-makers chose wood because it was available, workable and durable. Contemporary makers who choose it do so for the same practical reasons and for one additional one: research suggests that the material itself matters. A study by Carly Dauch and colleagues found that toddlers engaged in higher-quality, more focused play when given fewer, simpler toys rather than many complex ones. Wood is quiet, tactile and honest about its weight and temperature in a way that plastic rarely is; it invites the kind of slow, exploratory handling that builds fine motor control.
For a two-year-old specifically, wooden toys offer something else: they are proportioned for small hands, they do not shatter, and their simplicity means that the adult playing alongside the child can focus on the conversation rather than on managing a complicated set of rules or batteries. That adult commentary, what Vygotsky called scaffolding, is where a large proportion of early language development happens. As Hart and Risley's landmark research demonstrated, the volume and quality of words a child hears in their early years has a measurable effect on vocabulary for years afterwards.
Browse Jaques wooden toys, made to the same exacting standards that have served families since 1795Spinning tops appear in ancient Egypt, in classical Greece, in Elizabethan England and on Victorian nursery floors. They survive because they are endlessly compelling to a young child: something spins, wobbles, rights itself, falls. There is cause and effect in its purest form, and for a child who is still mastering the basic grammar of the physical world, that loop of action and consequence is deeply satisfying.
Skittles are equally ancient and equally well suited to a two-year-old. The gross motor skills involved, rolling a ball, tracking its path, connecting the throw to the topple, are precisely the kind of whole-body coordination that developmental researchers including Jeffrey Trawick-Smith identify as foundational in the toddler years. Jaak Panksepp's neuroscientific work on play confirms that physical, active play activates the brain's core emotional systems in ways that support social and emotional regulation over time.
Explore Jaques skittles sets, a Victorian classic that still earns its place in the modern playroomThe dissected puzzle, invented in the 1760s and ubiquitous in Victorian nurseries, is the direct ancestor of today's jigsaw. Picture bricks, which could be rotated to reveal six different scenes, required a child to hold a mental image and manipulate physical objects to match it. Both toys develop what Adele Diamond's research identifies as executive function: the capacity to plan, to hold information in working memory and to correct course when something does not fit.
For a two-year-old, a chunky four- or six-piece puzzle or a set of large picture bricks offers exactly the right level of challenge: achievable with effort, satisfying when complete and repeatable without boredom, because each attempt is slightly different. Piaget observed that children at this age are in the sensorimotor-to-preoperational transition, actively constructing knowledge through physical manipulation of objects. A puzzle is not merely a puzzle; it is a small laboratory.
On the value of manipulative play
Researchers at Harvard's Center on the Developing Child note that the back-and-forth of a child working through a puzzle with a caring adult, trying, failing, being gently prompted and trying again, builds the neural connections associated with self-regulation and problem-solving more reliably than passive, screen-based activity of equivalent duration.
Victorian families played together at the table in the evenings: card games, simple board games, dominoes, lotto. These were not merely entertainment; they were social training. Taking turns, accepting a loss, noticing another player's expression: these are the invisible skills that a simple game teaches without anyone needing to mention them directly. Froebel, whose educational philosophy shaped the Victorian kindergarten movement, was emphatic that structured play in a social setting was among the most productive things a young child could do.
Even a very simple traditional game, matching tiles, lotto cards or a first board game with large wooden pieces, introduces a two-year-old to the concept that there are rules, that other people have a turn, and that the joy of playing together is often greater than the result. These are lessons that no amount of solo screen time can teach, and they begin surprisingly early.
The word "heritage" can make a toy sound decorative, as though it belongs behind glass rather than on the floor. The opposite is true. A heritage toy is one that has survived commercial pressure, changing fashions and generational turnover precisely because children kept choosing to play with it. That is a robust endorsement. Alison Gopnik's research on children as learners emphasises that the richest play is exploratory and self-directed; heritage toys, which make no demands and tell no stories on the child's behalf, invite exactly that quality of engagement.
Play as the work of childhood
Stuart Brown and Peter Gray, both prominent researchers in the science of play, argue that freely chosen, intrinsically motivated play is not a luxury in early childhood but a biological necessity. The toys that best support this are those that respond to the child rather than performing for them, which is a precise description of a wooden top, a set of skittles or a picture-block puzzle.
If you want a toy that a two-year-old will love now and that might be passed on to a younger sibling or a grandchild one day, the Victorian toyshop offers a reliable shortlist: a set of wooden skittles, a spinning top, a chunky puzzle, a set of picture bricks or a first simple board game with large, well-made pieces. Choose solid construction, non-toxic finishes and a maker whose standards you can trace. Jaques of London has been making and sourcing exactly these kinds of toys for over two hundred years, with the craft tradition to show for it.
Discover Jaques traditional games, designed for families and built to outlast a childhoodYes, provided they are bought from reputable makers who apply current safety standards. Modern wooden toys sold in the UK must comply with EN71 toy safety regulations, which cover everything from paint toxicity to minimum part size for choking risk. A well-made wooden skittle set or puzzle from an established maker is as safe as any contemporary plastic equivalent and considerably more durable. The Victorian originals were made without these regulations, but the forms themselves, smooth, rounded and solid, are inherently suited to small hands.
Possibly not for forty minutes at a stretch, and that is entirely normal at this age. What simple, open-ended toys offer is returnable interest: a toddler may spin the top, wander off, come back and spin it again, use it as a prop in an imaginary game and then knock it over with the skittles. Dauch's research found that children in low-stimulation, fewer-toy environments actually sustained focus for longer. The key is not a single toy that captivates indefinitely but a small collection of honest objects that reward repeated, varied engagement. A spinning top will be played with differently at two, at three and at five.
Apply two tests. First, does the toy require the child to do something, to aim, to stack, to match, to rotate, rather than simply to watch? Second, does it create an opportunity for you to play alongside your child and talk? If both answers are yes, the developmental case is strong regardless of the toy's age. The research of Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff and Trawick-Smith consistently points toward active, conversational, open-ended play as the gold standard; many Victorian toys meet that description precisely because they were designed before anyone thought to make toys that entertain children without involving them.
A well-made heritage toy costs more upfront and far less over time. A solid wooden skittle set does not break, does not require batteries, does not become landfill after six months and can genuinely be passed on. The aesthetic is a pleasant by-product of quality construction rather than its purpose. The developmental case for simple, open-ended, physically engaging toys is supported by substantial research; you are not paying for sentiment but for a form of play that has been tested by generations of children and increasingly validated by developmental science.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.