Inspire young minds and encourage social and STEM skills with these fantastic toys for 3 year old boys and girls

t three years old your child is fully mobile and has the communication skills to express what they really want to play with. However, finding a fantastic toy to keep a toddler interested can prove challenging. We’ve rounded up our pick of the best…

At 36 months, children can be into everything and anything. They may well have a favourite TV show, movie or special interest; unicorns, dinosaurs, vehicles and princesses are all still hugely popular. Often, toys that appeal the most are the ones that capture their imagination and allow many hours of pretend play, so go with what they’re naturally excited by.

At three years old, you’ll also notice a significant leap in their dexterity and gross motor skills, so they can really start to explore puzzles, playdough, fiddly building sets, crafting kits and explore more of the world around them by mastering a scooter or balance bike.

Three year olds will also be moving on from parallel play (the phase where they play next to another child, rather than with them) and prefer to engage with others during their play time. Toys that encourage sharing and turn-taking are really important at this stage to help learn those valuable social skills and support early friendships.

At three years old, children will be putting their new found language skills and curiosity to good use with plenty of imaginary play. Your little one will also be looking at the adults around them and modelling their behaviour, so this is the time to crack out the play kitchens, dollhouses and dressing up boxes.

It’s also not too early to start thinking a little more about prepping them for school. At this stage your three year old’s memory has improved and they can now reason logically and start sorting their toys into sequences. Introduce some basic phonics, counting and STEM toys now and you may be surprised how quickly these little sponges pick them up!

Shop the best toys for three year olds below

We have no idea how it works (magic? Witchcraft?), but kinetic sand is a fascinating toy for children and adults alike.

The sand itself is mouldable, squeezable, never dries out and is almost impossible to put down. Because it sticks to itself, it is nowhere near as messy as your average sandbox and the handy carry case it comes with means you can easily shut it up and store it away too.

As well as the case there are five moulds and two tools to craft mini sandcastles, kings and queens and anything else you can think of. Our three year old loved building up castles, brick by brick and then knocking them down again.

There is so much to love about this incredible STEM toy. From the hinged ladder to the working power drill (yep, really) and the chunky bolts, to the lovely play figures with changeable expressions, any preschooler will have hours of fun putting together this fire truck and driving it around on various fire-fighting emergencies.

The toy itself feels really sturdy and, even when it was assembled by a three year old, it stayed together despite some rather enthusiastic handling.

We loved that the box folded out and doubled as a play scene – perfect for some daring rescues up multi-storey buildings.

This railway set toy is so cool that adults will have as much fun playing with it as the three year olds. From renowned Swedish wooden toy train creators, Brio, this set has all the nostalgia and quality of a classic childhood toy, including the iconic wooden tracks, but with a few exciting modern upgrades.

At the centre of this 37-piece set is the battery-powered Record & Play Engine, which talks to its surroundings by responding to smart accessories such as tunnels and stations.

Press the red button on top of the engine and you can easily record your own train noises, which play as it drives around and interacts with the other smart accessories.

Our three year old loved how easy it was to pick up and move the tunnels around the track and the various roles they had such as causing the train to change direction, break down or be fixed. There’s even an app which you can pair the engine with and customise it even further.

As those gross motor skills develop your three year old will be looking for faster ways to get around and a scooter provides plenty of speed and fun! We love this scooter from Micro as it has all the important features you’d expect – intuitive steering, adjustable handlebar and smooth-ride wheels – plus, the base is made from discarded fishing nets found in the ocean.

Every single little part on this scooter is of the highest quality, but they are also completely replaceable, so if they eventually get worn out you can update the part, rather than having to shell out for whole new scooter, plus it avoids sending yet another used toy to landfill.

We’ve all been there. You’ve got out a selection of toys ready to entertain your three year old while you do a bit of tidying, but all they want to do is wrestle the vacuum from you and press the noisy buttons.

Well, this brilliant toy is a mini version of a Dyson Ball (complete with easy swerving action) and the best bit? It actually works. It picks up small bits so they can vacuum alongside you and genuinely help you clean the house! This is the perfect toy for tidy-up-time, encouraging helping out with chores and who knows, it may even save you a job too.

A preschool favourite, this colourful matching game is a simple way to teach three year olds patience, develop their memories and encourage observational skills.

Players must take turns to find a matching pair of wellies for their three monsters and the winner is the first to collect them all and shout “smelly wellies”. The game can be adapted from a simple matching exercise to a more advanced memory game and at under a tenner it makes a fantastically affordable gift.

The three year olds we played with loved spotting and choosing all the fun patterns on the wellies and laughing at the silly monsters too.

Got a little maths fan on your hands? This set supports the CBeebies animated series with mathlink cubes (remember those?) which can be used to build up the Numberblock towers from 0-10, complete with their familiar funny faces.

There are also 11 character cards and 15 double-sided, easy-to-follow activity cards that tie directly into various episodes. We found the cubes a handy visual representation for learning the basics of counting and whenever we watch Numberblocks we now have to count along with our own cubes too.

Have you ever met a three year old who didn’t love ice cream? Us neither. This beautiful 20-piece wooden toy feels super sturdy and includes eight different ice cream flavours, six toppings, two cones, a tub, a scoop and spoon and a menu for taking orders. The role play was pretty much immediate and our three year old loved stacking up all the scoops up on top of each other and talking about what flavours they might be serving up.

We loved that, unlike a lot of play kitchens and food sets, it was fairly compact and could easily be stored away.

Who else had one of these when they were growing up? Well, it turns out they’re still just as appealing generations later. This lovely set features 10 colourful wooden fish in a pretty wooden storage box with two chunky rods and a die to roll and determine which fish you need to hook.

This game is fantastic for refining fine motor skills, learning turn taking and a little numeracy too. It also has the classic, lasting feel of a toy that can be passed down again and again.

Switch on this chunky little tablet toy and you are immediately greeted by cheery Mr. Pencil! There’s a keypad to select different letters and modes as well as a small touch screen and stylus.

There are several activities to try, but we loved using the Scribble and Write to practise letter and number recognition and a bit of follow-along tracing too.

The upper and lower case modes are really handy, as they can be a bit confusing at this early stage and it also progresses on to spelling out full words – so there’s room to grow with it.

The tablet is really portable, so it’s great for long journeys or keeping little ones quiet when you’re out and about.

Based on the popular TV series, this incredible three-storey dolls house has some pretty cool features. Firstly it comes with three play figures, Peppa, her little brother George and play pal Suzy Sheep as well as 13 pieces of mini furniture to add to the fun.

But, it was the large sun and mood dial at the top of the house that really captivated our three year old. You can spin it to either day or night mode and each comes with different sounds and voices. The night mode also switches on all the lights in the house and there are several ‘hot spots’ throughout the levels, which play various sayings and sounds when a character is placed on them (these also change depending on what mode it is in).

There are all sorts of other surprises to discover if you look inside the fridge and cooker too. This one will be played with for hours.

Building on their successful magnetic rod and ball sets for toddlers, the new 12-piece Roboflex set has been created with slightly older children in mind and offers flexible, extendable magnetic bars to add an extra dimension to your three year olds magnetic creations.

There are plenty of possible combinations (there’s an inspiration poster to get you started too) and our tester loved the fun robot details including wheels, propellers and hooks.

The Roboflex set is also completely compatible with other SmartMax sets, so it’s easy to update and incorporate SmartMax toys you may already have in the house – we did just this and managed to create some seriously weird and wonderful robots.

The pizzeria is open! Three year olds will love this tasty set for a bit of cooking fun and sensory play. It comes with six different cans of pizza-themed dough and a range of tools, including the main pizza base stamper (which is just as satisfying as you’d hope), a pizza slicer, cheese grater and pizza delivery box, for hours of kitchen crafting. The different colours do – inevitably – get mixed together pretty quickly, but our mini chefs were not bothered at all and requested to play with this set again and again.

The Kinetic Sand Folding Sand Box is a brilliant toy for any three year old. It offers up sensory and imaginative play and we love that it can be folded up for easy storage and transportation. If you have a very physical three year old, then they will not be disappointed with the Mini Micro Eco Green Scooter. It is a quality piece of kit that is guaranteed to last through several children and has awesome green credentials too.