Best toys for 18 month old?

[daisymommy]

Poor Joshua is sooo completely bored with his babyish toys. It's time to clear them out and get some toddler toys. But it seems like there is either baby stuff for under 1 year, or bigger kid stuff for 3 and up. What about toddlers at 18 months? Heres what we have so far:
-board books
-wooden puzzles
-vehicles (little people bus, firetruck, etc.)
-Parent's soft blocks with shape insert pieces
-Fisher Price shape sorter (not really interested in it anymore)
-Stacking rings (too babyish now I think)

Everything else really isn't even worth commenting on it's so useless at this point. Of course we have crayons and paper, but I'm looking for suggestions on things he can use himself, independently. We also do not have a backyard (we live in a townhouse), so we don't need out door toys, or large indoor items (like climbers).

Thank you so very much for your help and recommendations!

[egoldber]

He's right at that age where pretend play really takes off. How about a kitchen or a workbench? And dress up stuff is really fun too: hats, big shoes, scarves, etc. Other thoughts:

Megabloks/Duplo (he's old enough now for real building)
painting with water! (DD will do this for ages)
those large cardboard bricks
musical instruments
Little People toys, especially the people and cars
dump trucks and firetrucks
a tea set (there are lots of boy-ish / gender neutral ones)
more complex puzzles and/or new puzzles
empty plastic cups (like from yogurt or jello, DD plays with these forever)
puppets, especially finger puppets

And if you don't already, I highly recommend rotating his toys. And also having fewer out at one time seems to really spark her interest in the ones that are out.

HTH,

[daisymommy]

Beth- I knew you'd have some great answers! You are my child development guru ;) I'll print out your list. Anyone else with more ideas?

[Momof3Labs]

Colin's gotten bored lately, too. Today I pulled out his Playhut ball pit and he had a blast with it - although who knows if the interest will be there next time. The Playhut things fold down VERY flat so they can slide under a bed or in a closet in between playtimes. Here's something similar to what we have:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3179630784&category=11744

Colin is also nuts for his Thomas train stuff - he has a train table, but often plays with them on the floor, too. The magnets that connect the cars fascinate him to no end; he loves building loooooooong trains! The battery operated engine was popular for a while, but we hid it for a while because it was always getting stuck against a wall, killing the batteries. Colin is happy when he sees the battery operated engine, but doesn't miss it when it isn't out.

The Little Tykes shopping cart is still very popular - it gets pulled out daily for trips around the kitchen. Colin is getting more interested in Megablocks, too.

How about some balls in different sizes?

We have a plastic kitchen set that I totally forgot about - I should pull that out next time!

[gour0]

What about a baby doll? My nephew used to push his around in his shopping cart and carry him around as well. It was small and soft, maybe 8-10 inches. I saw one at Big Lots. He also loved his vegetables. His shopping cart is filled with plastic vegetables and he likes to take them out and give them to his sister and cousin.

[Karenn]

*Colin LOVES his Little People Garage and all the cars that go with it. He'll play on his own but he'll also take any willing "victim" by the hand and drag them over to his garage and want to sit and play for what seems like hours.

*He spends a fair amount of time playing with his Little Tikes Kitchen. (He has the smaller one for babies 9 months and older.)

*He has an insane number of balls and seems to love every one of them.

*He also loves to scoot around on his little "tricycle." [ http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q16E615A7]

[August Mom]

Here are some suggestions: http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=12&topic_id=14393&mesg_id=14393&page=#14526

Also, I would highly recommend balls of any kind. And the cardboard blocks are nice (as are nesting/stacking blocks), but you may have to build the towers to knock over, so it won't be a completely independent toy. Similarly, the bowling set I suggested in the above thread is a blast for DS, but you do have to reset the pins. Also, another toy that DS loves for some unknown reason is the Leapfrog Phonics Radio.

http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/sr=1-1/qid=1078798032/ref=sr_1_1/602-7407618-2054200?%5Fencoding=UTF8&asin=B000067P6G

HTH