Spring is finally here, and with it comes the perfect excuse to refresh your child’s toy shelf, art supplies, and book collection! 🌸
Whether you’re celebrating a birthday or holiday, looking for fun outdoor activities, or just want to add something new to your little one’s playtime, we’ve got you covered. As SLPs, we know that just about anything can support language development—but we’ve put together a list of our top picks to make speech and play even more engaging across several categories:
Outdoor Play – Get outside and get moving! These picks encourage active play while building coordination and communication skills. ☀️🏃♂️
Building & Stacking – From blocks to magnetic tiles, these toys help develop problem-solving, spatial awareness, and early engineering skills. 🏗️🧱
Sensory Play – Squish, splash, and explore! These toys engage the senses and support language through hands-on discovery. 🌈👋
Fine Motor Play – Strengthen little hands and fingers with activities that promote coordination, dexterity, and pre-writing skills. ✍️🎯
Tabletop Games – Turn-taking, strategy, and teamwork—these games make learning social skills fun! 🎲🃏
Arts & Crafts – Creative fun that builds self-expression, storytelling, and fine motor skills all in one! 🎨✂️
Imaginative Play – Dress up, pretend, and role-play—these picks encourage creativity and rich language development. 🎭🚀
Books – Bright illustrations and engaging stories to spark a love of reading for little ones. Chapter books and engaging reads that build vocabulary and deeper language comprehension. 📖🌟
All of these toys, games, and books are wonderful ways to encourage language and play. Play is a crucial tool that children use to develop language as well as social skills, problem solving, and self-regulation.
NOTE: All play is okay. No matter your child’s age, we believe that as long as play is safe and fun, it is functional!
Whether your kid prefers to play alone, likes to play with the same toy over and over, or engages with toys in unconventional ways, follow their lead and celebrate the joy of play!
SPRING GIFT GUIDE 2025:
NOTE: This page contains affiliate links. Talk Time Boston receives a small commission on qualifying purchases using these links.
Outdoor Play
The warm weather has finally arrived! Outdoor play helps keeps kids active and provides a nice change of pace from being stuck inside all winter.
Flower Sprinkler Toy - This sprinkler hooks up to your hose for endless water fun. Kids will love running though the sprinkler on warm days!
Bug Catcher Kit - Kids got the nature bug? This kit helps them safely catch and examine all sorts of critters. Plus, it comes with a learning guide!
Easy Playhouse Club House - Kids can color and build their own playhouse! Check out their castle and fire station options, too.
Indoor-Outdoor Sidewalk Chalk - This set has everything you need to create beautiful outdoor art. Rainy day? Bring the chalkboard mat inside!
Building & Stacking
Building and stacking will help your child’s fine motor skills bloom! This developmental activity will improve hand-eye coordination, improve problem-solving abilities, and develop spatial awareness abilities. We also dig simple constructive play, as it lays the foundation for more advanced imaginative play as children grow.
Flower Garden Building Kit - This fun set of interlocking bases, flower parts, and butterflies has endless opportunities for creativity.
LEGO Garden & Flowers Building Toy Playset - This adorable set encourages little builders to explore plants and insects to celebrate springtime!
4-Piece Magnetic Stacking Cubes Building Set - Kids will have so much fun mixing and matching insects as they build!
Wooden Sorting Stacking Rocks Stones - These multi-faceted blocks look just like rocks from the garden and encourage little ones to build in new ways every time they play.
Sensory Play
Sensory play is blossom! It includes any activity that stimulates your young child’s senses. By exploring their senses, new nerve connections are built in their brain’s pathways. Sensory exploration helps children learn all sorts of skills!
Daisy Bubble Wands - These super cute wands are perfect for on-the-go bubble action - kids can watch bubbles fall and feel them as they pop!
Kinetic Sand Soft Serve Station - This ice-cream themed set comes with soft sand that kids will love to squish and pour. Try adding a few drops of essential oils to explore the sense of smell!
Squishy Sensory Toys - This set of squishy toys with moveable balls gives kids opportunities to explore their sense of touch while watching the colorful balls move.
Pop Tubes Sensory Toys - These collapsable tubes are so much fun to stretch, twist, and squish.
Fine Motor Play
Fine motor play helps develop the skills that children need to dew things on their own! Zipping their coat, picking up after themselves, cutting, using utensils, and more! It grows their hand-eye coordination and strengthens small muscles.
Carrot Harvest Game with Multi-Colored Carrots or Only Orange Carrots - This game has carrots of different sizes - kids can take on the challenge of figuring out which carrots fit into which holes in the garden!
Spike the Hedgehog - This hedgehog is so cute, and a great way for kids to explore colors and counting while placing the spikes into the holes.
Shape & Color Garden - This toy challenges little learners to match the shapes on flowers and pots. Can you spot these flowers in your garden?
Bee-Hive Toy - This wooden set comes with tweezers to help your little one grip the bees’ wings!
Table Top Games
To get to the May flowers, we have to get through the April showers! If you are stuck inside this spring, break out the board games! Board games help build the critical social communication and executive function skills of turn taking, sharing, making plans, and more.
The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Board Game - Players compete to be the first to fill their tree stump with acorns. The squirrel squeezer adds a fine-motor challenge, too!
Honey Bee Tree Game - Take turns removing branches from the tree - but bee careful to not let the bees fall!
Toy Carrot Harvest Game - This game combines memory and fine-motor skills as players collect vegetables from the garden.
Gathering a Garden Board Game - Ideal for older kids, this board game has players collect gardening items from different categories!
Arts & Crafts
Art is a-May-zing! First of all, it’s fun! Secondly, it provides endless opportunities for communication. Talk about colors, shapes, sizes, and more. Kids may ask for help with the tricky parts, like cutting. Crafting can also be a great, simple activity that helps kids relax and regulate.
Wooden Magnet Painting Kit - This kit has everything you need to DIY a set of spring-themed magnets!
Spring Dot Marker Activity Book - This book is full of fun pages to color with dot markers! A great alternative to traditional coloring books for kids with fine motor challenges.
24 Washable Paint Sticks - These sticks are a mess-free alternative to traditional paint, and can be used on paper, wood, glass, and more!
Coola Spring Craft Kit - This fun craft uses simple sewing skills to create super cute spring decor!
Imaginative Play
Imaginative, or pretend play, is a great way to build a variety of skills - social, language, emotional, creativity, executive functioning, and problem solving! Plus, you’ll get to hear all of the un-bee-leaf-ably creative ideas your little one has floating around in their wonderful brain!
Bake Cookie Play Set - This fan-favorite cookie set comes with everything you need to whip up a batch of delicious cookies.
Dress Up Costume Set with Pretend Roles - We love teaching kids about community helpers, and with these costumes they can pretend to be real-life workers!
Baby-doll Dress Up Set - The pastels in this set of doll outfits are perfect for spring!
Garden Play Set - Kids will love tending to their very own garden with this cute set.
Books - Younger Audiences (Pre-Literacy Skills)
Reading puts a spring in our step! No surprise, we have lots of books to recommend. Reading with your child is linked to vocabulary building, growth of language skills, stronger pre-literacy skills, and even academic success. It also exposes your child to print awareness and narrative structure. Here are a few of our favorites for springtime!
Books - Older Audiences (Literacy Skills)
Strong early phonological awareness skills are a positive predictive indicator for later reading success. These skills include rhyming, blending, sound isolation, and letter-sound correspondence. By reading with your little ones, you expose them to these skills and they can build towards doing them on their own -- they’ll become a budding reader themselves!
Books for Learning to Read
If you are looking to support your child to reading and literacy skills, the Lovevery Reading Kits are the best deal. Teaching through play, these kits walk through developmentally-appropriate pre-literacy and literacy skills. And the accompanying books make it easy for your child to feel successful at their reading level as they learn.
There are three different levels -- Sounds to Reading, Words to Books, and Advanced Rules to Chapter Books spanning from pre-K skills to skills learned in 1st/2nd grade. Buy one kit at a time or buy all three.
NOTE: Alessandra wants to share that her kid loves his reading games and asks to play them because he really thinks they are fun, not because he's "trying to learn to read." She highly recommends them as a parent and an SLP.
Need More?
Have specific questions? Feel free to comment below or find us on instagram. We would love to help you find the perfect gift for your little one.
Want all this information and some educational content in one handy PDF? Download the Spring Gift Guide for free -- don't forget to click on the pictures for easy-to-use links.
Comments