My darling little Ivy has just turned two, and as her birthday is not too long after Christmas and she is the second child in a house full of toys already, we had a real challenge thinking of gifts for her.  I decided that we might focus on getting her some educational gifts; to ensure that she has something to help her to develop in every way in this very important toddler year.

Her main gift this year is a tricycle, it's something that Ethan never had and that she has shown interest in when we go to playgroups.  This is great for her physical development as it will help with her co-ordination and to build muscles in her arms and legs.  She has to grow a tiny bit for her feet to reach the pedals on this one, but we wanted one that would last her well through the summer.



For her creative development and imaginative play she got this Pippa's Princess Carriage from Wow Toys.  It's such a sweet little toy, Ivy loves the horse that pulls the carriage and to turn the little princess round and round to see her reflection in mirror change.  It's great for small world play and to pretend that the princess has important places to go in her carriage. Ivy likes to drive it around then bring the princess out to say hello to her other little toys.



For her understanding of the world Ivy got this Farmyard Heads and Tails game from Orchard Toys to help her to learn about animals.  It's a fun game to play in matching the animal pieces together, and gives us a good chance to say all of the animal names and make their sounds as well.



As part of Ivy's communication and language development she got this Hug Olaf book from Parragon Books.  It's a familiar story that she enjoys and has the cute little Olaf finger puppet that she loves playing and interacting with.  It's a great story for encouraging Ivy to engage with the characters and give her own input.



For literacy development we have these fantastic Alphabet Puzzle Blocks from Learning Resources.  Ivy loves building blocks already, so this is a fun way to introduce letters and phonic sounds with blocks that go together like a puzzle to form different objects that begin with a letter.  I also like that it matches up capital and lower case letters, as children need to learn both but it can be a tricky thing to catch on to.



For her mathematical development Ivy got this Counting Caterpillars game from Orchard Toys. It's a lovely game for learning to count and to identify numbers.  It's definitely one that she'll grow into and continue to have fun playing for a couple of years.  I love how you make your own little caterpillar puzzle before getting to play the game, then find all of the numbers that you need.



She will also be learning colours with this Red Dog Blue Dog game from Orchard Toys.  It's a sweet little lotto game for matching up colours of different animals and objects.  This will be ideal for Ivy as she is very much using her imagination to decide which colours are which and could use a bit of fun to get her to learn the real names of them.



She will also be learning about shapes, colours and sizes with this Discoveroo Rainbow Shape Sorter from Born Gifted.  We love wooden toys and keep them all on a special shelf together for easy access.  This is a great addition to our collection and teaches about size in a different way to other toys that we have.  Ivy is already loving putting all of the pieces into the base and taking them back out again.



Ivy absolutely loves all of her gifts, she is a very lucky girl and is having so much fun playing and learning with her new toys.  They will definitely keep her very busy for the next few months, especially on all of those rainy days that we're spending indoors.



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* This is a review post, we were sent toys from Wow Toys, Orchard Toys, Learning Resources, Parragon Books and Born Gifted to play with and write our honest opinions about.*