14 of the best baby toys for 6 to 12-month-olds
Our pick of the top toys for a boy or girl baby between the ages of 6 months and 1 year, as tested by babies and rated by their parents
"From 6 to 12 months of age, your baby becomes more responsive, more dextrous and more active," says Helen Brown, author of Parenting for Dummies.
"As they become keener to explore the world around them, it may start to feel like a bit of a challenge to keep them occupied – and stop them grabbing stuff you don't want them to. Especially when they work out how to crawl, scoot or roll across the floor towards something that's caught their eye."
Helen continues, "Now that your baby can grab and hold things and bang them together, you can give them toys that 'do' more. Your child will particularly like toys that spin or rattle or light up or make a sound when they're touched or pressed or pushed."
So, as your child gets closer to their first birthday, you'll want to treat them with toys that improve their development and keep them occupied, which is where we come in. Below you'll find the best toys for 6 to 12 month olds, all of which have been tested by parents and babies. The toys come in a range of prices, sizes and textures from reputable brands.
Best toys for 6 to 12 months at a glance
- Great sensory ball: KIDLY Sensory Nesting Balls, £12
- Great sensory texture toy: Sense & Grow Sensory Tissue Box, £16.99
- Great sensory splash mat: While and Wonder Sky Edition: Baby's First Sensory Water Mat, £19.99
- Great sensory stacker: Melissa & Doug Multi-Sensory Pineapple Soft Stacker, £18.31
- Great activity cube: Taf Toys Savannah Discovery Cube, £14.99
- Great first train: Soft Clemmy Touch Move & Play Sensory Train, £21.76
- Great for bath time: Green Toys Tugboat, £14.99
- Great for teaching cause and effect: VTech Turn and Learn Cube, £28
- Great for fine-finger control: Tomy Toomies New Hide N Squeak Eggs, £10.99
- Great budget buy: Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack, £4.50
- Great teething toy: Tikiri Rattle and Bath Toys, from £10.99 each
- Great for multi-sensory entertainment: Taf Toys Mini Moon Activity Centre, £15.97
- Great for music, lights and dancing: Fisher-Price Linkimals Dance n Groove Cool Beats Penguin, £33.99
- Great sensory blocks: B. Toys One Two Squeeze, £13.95
What are the best toys for 6 to 12 months?
Additional writing and product selection by Gill Crawshaw
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1. KIDLY Sensory Nesting Balls, £12
– Great sensory ball
Available at: KIDLY
Age suitability: From birth | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: Diameters 14cm (large); 11cm (medium); 8cm (small) | Batteries: None | Awards: Gold - MadeForMums Toy Awards 2022
These 3 squidgy, tactile balls can be held, thrown, bounced, rolled, squashed, chewed and thrown. They nest inside each other or can be played with separately and, made from robust, food-grade, BPA- and pthalate-free silicone, they can be chucked in the dishwasher when they need a clean.
Roman enjoys watching the balls bounce and roll – they encourage him to move around and also practise fine motor skills in grasping, rolling and banging them together.
2. Sense & Grow Sensory Tissue Box, £16.99
– Great sensory texture toy
Available at: Amazon
Age suitability: 5 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L29.2cm xW15.24cm x H10.2cm | Batteries: None | Awards: Silver - MadeForMums Toy Awards 2023
Suitable for babies and toddlers from five months, Sense & Grow Sensory Tissue Box is a brightly coloured and patterned tissue box made from soft fabric. The tissues come in the shape of textured, tactile scarves in different colours and patterns. There are 15 of them in total, in fabrics including sheer, tulle, cotton and a corduroy crinkly scarf. Each tissue is designed to give your baby a different sensation.
As soon as the toy was placed in front of her she looked at the different colours and immediately started pulling the different texture tissues out of the box. When she realised she had the crinkle tissue, she started shaking this and playing with it the longest.
3. While and Wonder Sky Edition: Baby's First Sensory Water Mat, £21.99
– Great sensory splash mat
Available at: While and Wonder and Amazon
Age suitability: 3 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: 60cm diameter (when side inflated) | Batteries: None | Awards: Silver - MadeForMums Toy Awards 2022
This playmat/pat mat has an inflated edge and yellow shapes floating in the water above beautiful black-and-white images of birds and insects in a starry sky. The idea is that your baby lies with their tummy resting on the comfy, inflated edge and touches the soft surface to feel and see the water move the yellow shapes around. It's made from robust, BPA-free PVC, with a good, well-placed water plug, and is easy to wipe clean. It's also brilliantly portable.
Also comes as a Sea edition, with ocean imagery.
He is content, comfortable and happy here for long periods of play. This toy is of very high quality and exceptionally durable.
4. Melissa & Doug Multi-Sensory Pineapple Soft Stacker, £22.99
– Great sensory stacker
Available at: John Lewis and Amazon
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L16.5cm x W16.5cm x H23.5cm | Batteries: None | Awards: Bronze - MadeForMums Toy Awards 2023
A sensory stacking toy with an appealingly fruity theme, the Melissa & Doug Multi-Sensory Pineapple Soft Stacker is a fun toy from a trusted brand. Suitable for babies from 6 months, the pineapple stacker is a multi-sensory toy with various textures and sounds designed to engage and stimulate babies. Designed as a friendly, happy faced pineapple, the stacker includes four rings to stack on and off the base. These include two soft rings that chime and crinkle, one plastic ring, and a soft textured topper with scrunchy leaves and silky smooth ribbons. The stacker itself is fabric-covered and has a weighted rocking base for added stability and playfulness.
It's really visually appealing for children. My daughter was really excited to play with the pineapple stacker absolutely loves stacking at the moment, so this is right up her street.
5. Taf Toys Savannah Discovery Cube, £14.99
– Great activity cube
Available at: Amazon and Halilit
Age suitability: From birth | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L9.5cm x W9.5cm x H9.5cm (cube); H33cm when hanging | Batteries: None
This multi-sensory soft cube has a fabric handle and sides featuring different textures, patterns and animal faces. It jingles when you shake it and attached to it, or dangling from it, are a baby-safe mirror, a rattle, a teether, a peekaboo leaf, and 2 'rustling rings'. It also has a clip to attach it to a buggy or car seat.
Alice immediately took to this cube, she plays with it quietly, exploring the animals, and she enjoys shaking and bashing it – and, as it’s so soft, I'm happy just watching her do so.
6. Soft Clemmy Touch, Move & Play Sensory Train, £24.99
– Great first train
Available at: Amazon and Tesco
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L10cm x W40cm x H7cm | Batteries: None
This soft, rubber train set is made up of 1 locomotive and 3 connecting (and detachable) wagons – all with working wheels – and comes with 8 coloured, stackable blocks that slot into the wagons and the engine. All the brightly coloured parts are dishwasher-safe.
The whole set feels lovely – it has a really tactile, squishy, rubbery texture. I feel confident that when Bran's bashing the blocks around he won't break them or hurt himself. It seems pretty durable, too, and because it's suitable for babies as well as toddlers, that makes it good value for money.
7. Green Toys Tugboat, £14.99
– Great for bath time
Available at: Amazon and Green Toys
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L23.5cm x W11cm x H13cm | Batteries: None
Made from BPA-free, 100% recycled plastic, this robust red, yellow and blue boat bath toy has a handle on top for and a spout at the front for lots of scooping and pouring action. We love its generous size, simple lines, bright colours and big and chunky handle. Our baby testers had fun tipping water out of the spout – which, actually, is great for hair-washing, too. It also comes apart easily for cleaning – and, for some of our baby testers, for using as a raft for other bath toys to float on top!
8. VTech Turn and Learn Cube, £28
– Great for teaching cause and effect
Available at: Amazon
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 9 months+ | Size: L16.5cm x H16.5cm x W16.5cm| Batteries: 2 x AAA (included)
Featuring light-up buttons, sliding pieces, flipping pieces, animal and musical-instrument noises, 25 tunes and sing-a-long songs and other, motion-triggered sound effects, this interactive cubeas loads to keep your baby engrossed. It's nice and robust – although it's made of rigid plastic, not silicone or rubber, so it's not squishy or soft like some of the other toys in our list. All the different features are designed to enhance motor-skill development, language development and imaginative play.
9. Tomy Toomies New Hide N Squeak Eggs, £10.99
– Great for fine-finger control
Available from: Argos and The Entertainer
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L12.6cm x W17.2cm x H7.7cm | Batteries: None | Awards: Gold - MadeForMums Toy Awards 2023
With six crackable white eggs in a yellow plastic egg box, the new edition of Hide and Squeak Eggs has increased in size, making the eggs easier to hold for little hands. Crack the egg shells to reveal brightly coloured chicks. But this isn’t where the surprises end as three of the chicks emit a cheep-cheep sound when pushed down, while the other three rattle when shaken. The Hide and Squeak Eggs offer a range of ways to play including colour matching the faces and bases or sorting egg into slot in the box, as each has a different geometric shaped base.
He has loved his original eggs since he was around 6 months old, but we like the new eggs even more. They feel nice to hold and I like that they have a more of a matt texture and are less shiny than the originals. My son loves exploring them and discovering whether they rattle or squeak.
10. Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack, £4.50
– Great budget buy
Available at: Argos and Amazon
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L12cm x W13cm x H22cm | Batteries: None
This great-value stacking set has 5 brightly coloured rings that fit over a base, from big to small. The top ring is see-through and has coloured beads inside. It's a brightly coloured, no-frills baby pleaser, as all our baby testers' parents agreed. The rings are nice and grabbable and the top one is filled with lovely, shiny, rattle-y stuff. The base rocks if you tap it, and you can tell yourself that your baby is learning all about size and sequence as you (endlessly) stack the rings back on the base once your baby has grabbed them all off.
The classic toy has impressive eco-credentials: the toy is made mostly from plant-based materials (extracted from sugar cane, in fact) and comes in FSC-certified packaging. No fancy, but it ticks lots of baby play boxes at a very affordable price.
11. Tikiri Rattle and Bath Toys, from £10.99 each
– Great teething toy
Available at: Tikiri Toys
Age suitability: From birth | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: Varies by animal but roughly H12cm | Batteries: None
These handmade bath toys, made for 100% organic, biodegradable rubber, come in 18 different animal shapes from lion and crocodile (pictured, above right) to octopus, puppy, zebra and sheep. They each have a built-in rattle and are safe to use out of the water as a teething toy.
Ariel loves the noise they make, and I like the material they're made of: it's smooth and tactile and easy to clean. I'd recommend them because they're so versatile – being able to use in and out of the bath, too.
12. Taf Toys Mini Moon Activity Centre, £17
– Great for multi-sensory entertainment
Available from: Amazon and Kidly
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L22cm x W28cm x H2cm | Batteries: None
This soft, circular activity toy has multiple sensory and play elements, including textured ribbons, rattling balls, a peek-a-boo cloud and a crinkle moon. The red grab handle means it can be played with in 2 ways: flat on a mat during tummy time for younger babies, then sitting up from around 9 months.
For families with limited space, this is a great, cheaper alternative to both a baby gym or the more usual activity centre/table, as it offers similar accessories and sensory elements in a smaller package. There's plenty to keep a baby entertained and engaged – as all our baby testers' parents agreed – and it's great for developing exploration and curiosity.
13. Fisher-Price Linkimals Dance n Groove Cool Beats Penguin, £33.99
– Great for music, lights and movement
Available from: Amazon, Argos and Smyths
Age suitability: 9 months+ | Best for age: 9 months+ | Size: L24.7cm x W13.8cm x H27cm | Batteries: Batteries required: 4 x AA (included)
The latest addition to the bestselling Linkimals range, the 24cm-high Cools Beats Penguin flaps his flippers and bobs from side to side when you press his buttons, along with lots of lights and musical sounds. Other features include sounds and phrases to help teach numbers, shapes, letters and opposites. Apart from his soft flippers, he’s a very solid toy (not very cuddly) but his dancing is very cute and very appealing to babies. If you have other Linkimals, they will interact together and have a mini dance party.
I actually didn't think this toy would be such a hit,but it's such fun! It has loads of songs, both silly and educational – and my 3-year-old is really enjoying it too.
14. B. Toys One Two Squeeze, £13.95
– Great sensory blocks
Available at: Amazon
Age suitability: 6 months+ | Best for age: 6 months+ | Size: L5cm xW5cm x H5cm (individual block) | Batteries: None | Awards: Silver, MadeForMums Toy Awards 2022
Inside the handy zip-up storage bag, are 10 colourful, soft, squeezy textured blocks. Each side of each BPA-free block is hand-sculpted with a different picture of an animal, a number or a shape. They're a really good size for baby hands and perfect for stacking, chewing and sensory exploration. They do squeak when you squeeze them – but you do have to squeeze them quite hard, so your baby might not be able to make them squeak. They float, too, but as they do have an air hole that could trap water inside, they're not suitable for extended bath play.
She squeals in excitement when she knocks the blocks over. She likes throwing them and chasing after them, too. It's great to hear her having so much fun! She also laughs a lot when I squeeze block and blow air on her face.
How to choose and use baby toys safely
It's particularly important with young babies to consider safety when choosing toys. Here's what to look out for.- Look for the CE mark, which is the manufacturers claim that the toy meets regulatory requirements
- Look for the voluntary British Toy and Hobby Association's Lion Mark (a red lion inside a yellow triangle)
- Buy from retailers that you know and trust
- Ensure the toy is appropriate for your child's age. Small pieces (including things like plastic eyes on teddy bears that appear 'fastened on' but aren't properly, securely attached) are choking hazards for babies.
- Beware of any items that detach or have sharp edges
- Check toys regularly for loose threads or escaped filling
- Supervise your child at all times when they're playing with toys
- Never leave toys in your baby's cot while they sleep, even if the toys are marked 'safe from birth'.
We've got more top tested and rated toys here...
Authors
Gabrielle Nathan has been a journalist for 20 years, writing lifestyle features for publications including Red, Women’s Health, Wildflower and Condé Nast Traveller. She has been writing about parenting since 2012, the year she became a mum.
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