These days there are a plethora of great toys to choose from if you want to find something that will keep your children engaged and feed their love of learning. Better still, there’s something for every price point, meaning that you don’t have to break the bank to find a gift that will help your child’s development.
Today we’re going to look at four of the most affordable gift ideas for toys that also help stimulate young minds, wherever their interests may lie. To ensure that these toys offer even better value for money, we have ensured to choose toys that encourage boundless curiosity and exploration, meaning they should keep your youngest busy - and learning - for longer.
For more inspiration, have a look at our guides to five educational toys every child should have and gadget fun for all ages.
4M Great Gizmo Potato Clock
Price:
£14.99
Great For:
The 4M Great Gizmo Potato Clock pays tribute to everybody’s favourite childhood experiment: the humble potato clock. Not only does the finished clock teach valuable lessons about telling the time, but it can spark a whole world of intrigue for your kids: after all, if you can power a clock with potatoes… what else can they do? How does electricity work? Can other fruits and vegetables be used as batteries?
Potatoes aren’t provided with the kit, but you can also experiment with lemons, apples, tomatoes and more to find out which works best. The Great Gizmo Potato Clock also represents great value, as it can be used whenever there are spare vegetables in the house!
See our full range of science toys for kids that crave more knowledge about the world around them.
Butterfly Garden Kit with live voucher
Price: £24.99
Great For:Kids who love animals and the outdoors that want to see their own animals grow!
Butterfly Garden Kit with live voucher
At any age there’s great joy to be had watching butterflies in the garden, with their beautiful patterns and mesmerising colours they are always welcome guests, especially when their arrival means that the evenings start to get longer and the weather becomes that much more enjoyable.
But for children they are even more magical, especially when you realise that they started out life as a caterpillar. The Butterfly Garden Kit allows children to watch these incredible insects as they grow and pass through each stage, teaching invaluable lessons about how to care for creatures while giving a fascinating insight into biology and the natural world around them.
The live voucher means that when your children are ready, it can be redeemed and you will be sent live caterpillars in the post inside a feeding cup that has everything that they need to grow. In around ten days, the caterpillars will begin to metamorphasise, growing to around ten times their original size and hang upside down, hardening into pupae.
In another seven to ten days the butterflies will emerge from their cocoon and begin to appear in the 30cm pop-up enclosure.
There’s a real difference between reading about how butterflies grow and seeing it first-hand for yourself, and for your children, it will be hard to beat the thrill of raising butterflies of their very own before setting them free into the wild.
See our full collection of Our World toys for kids that want to learn about the natural world around them.
12-in-1 Hydraulic Solar Construction Kit
Price:£24.99
Great For:Kids who love to build, take things apart and then build again!
12-in-1 Hydraulic Solar Construction Kit
One of the many joys of a modular construction kit for kids is that when they’ve finished building, they can take apart what they’ve created and then build something completely different.
With the 12-in-1 Hydraulic Solar Construction Kit, your kids can have fun learning about building and some basic engineering thanks to a hydraulic transmission and motorised gearbox. The whole thing is solar powered as well, regardless of what your child wants to create, and with 12 different animals and vehicles to choose from, it’s bound to keep them busy for a long time.
Things to build from the set include a T-Rex, an elephant and a forklift or digger to name a few! The set contains 212 pieces, and is perfect for children that enjoy a challenge or to flex their creative muscles.
Although the Hydraulic Solar Construction Kit is the most expensive entry on this list, it still offers tremendous value as it is in effect 12 toys for the price of one.
See our full range of construction toys for kids that love to build.
Galt Toys Rainbow Lab
Price:
£14.99
Great For:
Kids who love to play with colour and want to do experiments of their own!
To the outside observer, the Galt Toys Rainbow Lab might look like children having fun with colours, but in reality they are having an important introduction into the world of chemistry, giving them their first insight into a much wider world.
The Rainbow Lab comes with 12 set experiments to follow, but there is nothing holding your children back from carrying out a few experiments of their own if they are feeling adventurous and want to test out their own hypotheses.
The experiments can create rainbow coloured jelly crystals, which really come to life with the provided pair of rainbow glasses. Also included in the set are a pair of safety goggles (because it’s never too early to start practising lab safety) the beakers and ingredients to carry out your experiment and everything else you need to get started.
Equal parts science and art, the Rainbow Lab offers great value for money as an entryway into chemistry.
See our full range of art toys for kids that love to create and experiment.
