Don’t forget to look for volume adjusters for when you’ve had enough of listening to the same notes (The Independent)
Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for insider tips and product reviews from our shopping experts
Sign up for our free IndyBest email
Sign up for our free IndyBest email
Not only do musical toys add another level of entertainment to playtime, they also have developmental benefits for babies.
They encourage curiosity and self-expression, teach cause and effect, build fine motor skills and encourage a lifelong love of music.
Musical Toys also help to develop patience and selective hearing in parents due to the repetitive and sometimes ear-splitting noises they can produce in unskilled little hands.
We recommend looking for toys with a volume adjuster if buying for your own children or a parent that you like. If you are buying for a frenemy, go all out with a drum kit and cymbals.
Wooden toy experts Hape say: “When trying to find the right musical toy or instrument, ensuring the age range is correct is a priority. Look for toys that have been made specifically to help develop children from birth and each toy is made to compliment the natural development of children.”
It goes on to say that “the power of musical toys not only develops little brains from an early age it also drives children to higher language processing abilities, contributing to the development of cognitive functions such as attention, visual-spatial perception, executive functions as well as auditory skills and cognitive flexibility”.
We tested wide range of toys for babies and toddlers, looking for fun, sturdiness and educational and developmental benefits.
You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Halilit my first baby band
Imagine how cute it would be if you actually formed a little baby band, with real babies playing these instruments? They could rock out to “Twinkle Twinkle” with little Oscar on the maraca, Jack on the egg shaker and baby Luna on the rainbow tube. There’s also a textured rattle and caged bell to prevent any rifts between band members. The instruments are perfectly sized and shaped for little hands and their bright colours and noises fascinated the tiniest of our little testers. They are super durable and are fine for little ones to put in their mouths. Our little testers adored these and we adored the price.
Two of the brightest stars in the toddler universe – Little Tikes and Little Baby Bum have collided to create a wildly popular range of pre-school toys. This book takes classic Little Baby Bum songs and characters and puts them between soft, wipe clean, musical pages. Genius. As if we didn’t have enough to thank LBB for, now there’s this.
Our toddler testers loved this book because it contains all their LBB heroes and we love it because it teaches numbers and counting and makes them smile. We loved the wide range of songs – and once we switched out of demo mode we all got to enjoy the tunes in full. It’s not cheap for a musical book, but for LBB fans it will be life-changing.
Octotunes is a super smiley, squishy, sensory octopus whose tentacles each play a different note when squeezed. It will engage the tiniest of babies with its bright colours, patterns and textures, and our older testers used the songbook to play tunes with the tentacles – which is quite a party trick! Babies seem to love anything yellow, and our little testers adored this. We love that you can put it on a cool wash.
While testing musical toys we found that the most important factors were longevity and variety. Toys that appeal to wide age groups last longer and can be passed from sibling to sibling. Toys that offered several functions or sounds were also a success. The Halilit my first baby band was the Best Buy because it offered a variety of instruments that appealed to all testers from babies to toddlers and was durable and good value. The Baby Einstein magic touch piano was a close second because it has both basic and more sophisticated functions that spanned age gaps.
Thank you for registering
Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in
