A Toy Reviewer’s Guide to the Best Holiday Gifts for 3-Year-Olds

If you share a home with a 3-year-old, you know how futile it is to ask them not to bounce a ball indoors. Rugs help with the noise, but this quiet foam mini-basketball helps even more — especially if you have downstairs neighbors. It’s also incredibly fun to play with.

Playroom dance parties are a lot more fun with a couple star streamers to wave around.

Once you’ve gotten all the wiggles out, most 3-year-olds will love sitting down with this craft kit that lets you apply colored pom-poms to drawings of a poodle, a dachshund, and a rotund mixed-breed pup.

Susie Allison, a mom, former teacher, and the creator ofBusyToddler.com, loves gifting kinetic sand to 3-year-olds because it is so satisfying to play with. Kinetic sand isn’t gritty like real sand — it has a velvety-smooth texture that’s easy to mold, and it’s way less likely to end up in someone’s eyes. This construction-site set is an excellent value, with two pounds of light-brown kinetic sand, a working dump truck, a crane with a swinging bucket, and a wrecking ball.

Three-year-olds who’ve entered their dinosaur era will love this bag of stackable wooden specimens that can double as action figures for playing pretend.

LCD drawing boards are a modern twist on the classicMagnaDoodle— all it takes to draw is gentle pressure from your finger or a stylus. Both Newell-Hanson and Calavan told me they’ve bought them in multiples to keep on hand as gifts. This one from B.Toys comes with a two-sided stylus that clicks into a holder on the board, as well as a set of stencils shaped like a house, a car, and a smiley face. I especially appreciate the one-touch erase button, which provides aliteral clean slate in an instant.

I fell in love with this pair of animal walkie-talkies while visiting Battat’s booth at theNew York Toy Fairand plan to buy a set for my son’s third birthday. The small size and simple controls make them easy for little kids to master. They have a 100-foot range, and when you push the button, the giraffe and zebra’s eyes move and an indicator light turns green or red to let you know when it’s your turn to talk.

At 3 years old, Calavan’s son was so obsessed with Hot Wheels cars that he would even sleep with them sometimes. So she always kept a few on hand as cheap, small gifts, just in case she needed to “negotiate a deal with a terrorist toddler.”

If you have an aspiring pop singer in your home, publicist and mom of twoSonya Li Casinorecommends this wireless mic that her son loves to perform with. Though Casino warns that it’s “slightly obnoxious,” it’s also undeniably fun.

Jeannette Corey, director of theBank Street Family Center, says that for young children “play should be as hands-on and open-ended as possible with lots of opportunities for creativity, curiosity, problem-solving, and cooperation.” She recommends giving kidsopen-ended building toyslike blocks that will grow with them as they mature and become more sophisticated. The nine different shapes in this 100-piece set from Melissa & Doug are made of smooth, vibrantly painted wood and allow kids to build a huge variety of structures.

Strategist senior editor Jen Trolio told me about this monster-themed math scale that’sfun for multiple ages. “A friend of mine recently bought this for her newly 3-year-old twins and says that her 5- and 7-year-old kids are also into playing with it because they’re learning about basic addition at school,” she says. Whether they understand the equations or not, trying to get the two sides to balance out is a great introduction to early math concepts.

This is the marble run that my son’s preschool class has been experimenting with lately. So it’s also the marble run he’s asked me to buy for him to play with at home.

In addition to selling realistic-looking costume jewels, Super Smalls makes great dress-up shoes. These over-the-top mermaid heels make getting into character easy and a lot of fun. Plus, the clomping sound they make when a 3-year-old walks in them is hilariously cute.

Lately, I’ve been having lots of tea parties with my son, who insists on actually drinking out of the cups. So I went looking for a non-plastic set and settled on this stainless-steel one from Melissa & Doug. It comes with a teapot, sugar bowl, mini milk pitcher, tongs, and pairs of cups, plates, and spoons, plus a convenient storage rack to hold it all.

You don’t need to shell out for a coding robot to gift aSTEM toy. This simple wooden bug hotel is home to 13 realistically painted insects that kids can match to their silhouettes on the shelf while learning their names and where each one can be found outdoors. Plus, each bug can be added to a tower of blocks or abin of kinetic sandas toddlers imagine a day in the life of the snail, worm, or bumblebee.

Tinkerer kids will love playing with this realistic but safe “power saw” that actually cuts wood-grained foam boards. The set also comes with a hammer and nails, safety goggles, a carpenter’s pencil, and blueprint instructions for a variety of projects. Once you’ve used up all the boards, you canbuy refillsand add to your kid’s tool kit with other accessories like ahand sawandclamp.

Like many toddlers, my son is obsessed with trains. And while he’s had other electric locomotives, the batteries were always dying after very little time on the tracks. So I got him this rechargeable one that either uses a USB-C charger or can be wound by hand to power it up. It’s also compatible with most wooden track sets.

This book doesn’t have much of a plot, but my son still insists that I read it to him every night before bed. Each page has a grooved track that lets you drive the wind-up train around and around.

Highland cowsmightbe thenext big animal-toy trend. And this animatronic one that follows its bottle around like a real baby calf is my favorite example yet.

The geniuses behind Fat Brain Toys found a way to cross a pop fidget with a wobble board. It’s not a great toy for people who are easily overwhelmed by noise or who have sensitive downstairs neighbors. But it is a great toy for everyone else.

Little kids love Little People, and this set comes with four figures plus a pull-along school bus.

My son was recently gifted a hand-me-down ukulele, and I have been shocked by how much he loves strumming it and putting on “concerts” for us. He is very focused when he’s playing, so for Christmas I’m going to buy him this nicer uke from Loog so he can continue to make up songs with less frustration and better sound.

Melissa & Doug’s Water Wow! reusable coloring books are a perennial favorite. Each one comes with a paintbrush-like pen that you fill with water to magically “paint” colors onto each page; as pages dry, the colors disappear, so kids can paint them all over again.Sarah Gregory, a mom of twin boys and a girl, explains that as they play with the books, kids learn to feel a mastery over them, which 3-year-olds hardly ever feel with anything else in their life. Perhaps more importantly, she adds, there is “instant quiet in our house when they get going on them.”

Last winter, our family embarked on a weekend-by-weekend tour of the many wonderful (and chaotic) indoor play spaces that have popped up all over Brooklyn, which is how we also discovered these squishy stepping stones. My son was transfixed by the feeling of the liquid-filled discs under his feet and the way each step made the colors mix beneath him. The stones are also durable and long-lasting, as evidenced by the hordes of children I’ve seen stomping all over them.

This Maileg mouse dance studio has two sides: one with two mirrors and a barre, and the other with bunk beds and a drawer for storing tutus and tights.

I have long been enamored with the wooden play sets from Target’s Hearth & Hand with Magnolia collection, mostly for their subdued color schemes and vintage aesthetics that won’t add visual chaos to an already cluttered living room. But I also love the attention to detail and clever moving parts. This barn with toy animals and hay bales offers a complete play experience out of the box and also works well with the collection’s correspondingtractorandpeg people.

Natalie Martins, owner of the kids’-bike review siteTwo Wheeling Tots, recommends the Retrospec Cubbalance biketo families on a budget. She says it has great geometry and easy-to-use quick-release clamps on the seat and handlebars that make them especially simple to adjust. Or, if you’re able to spend a little more, theCub Plusadds cushioning air tires and a hand brake.

Flybar makes quality ride-on toys, like this Minnie Mouse scooter with a sidecar for a doll.

For a more low-tech option, I suggest a PlasmaCar. There are no batteries, gears, or pedals — all kids need to move is the momentum created when they lift their feet, wiggle their body, and turn the steering wheel.

If you’re looking for a gift with wow factor, this dress-up closet will delight little thespians while keeping their wardrobe organized. It has a garment rod, four shelf compartments, and a built-in shatterproof safety mirror so they can practice lasso tricks, spell casting, princess waving, or robot dance moves.

“This bounce house is a near-permanent fixture in our backyard,” says Jamie Banks, a mother of three. It’s perfect for getting energy out, big enough to host group toddler hangs, and can even be used indoors, if you have a large-enough space.