what toys does your 2-2.5 year old boy like?

[*Becky*]

Henry has always loved playing with his tractors and what he calls his 'big machines'  (combines, car transporters etc) and he has lots of them. He also has a farm, a garage, a train set, the usual stuff.
The last week or so he has been less and less interested in playing and I think he is probably  a bit bored. We don't probably have as much stuff as some people.
Just wondering what your lo loves and plays with regularly. H is not the best at independent play but he was getting a bit better until recently.
Thanks
bx

[~Emma~]

 B is getting right into painting now. I'm hoping it will blossom into more craft themed activites. He also loves his soft toys. I find if I set him up a good 'scenario' like a wee shelter and some plates, cups and spoons he will feed them etc. He's pretty good at imaginative play but needs me to start him off.

 Another time killer on the long, rainy days is to bring him downstairs in the morning in just his nappy. I leave his clothes in a wee pile on the coffee table and pop the tv on whilst I clean up the kitchen. He always, always tries to dress himself. Its hilarious! He's actually getting pretty good now though and can get his legs in his trousers! he never knows I'm watching, its so funny. 

 Right now though his fave is the babywalker! Never liked it when he was D's age but now he cant get enough!

[Lolly]

DS spent a lot of time with his kitchen from this age! I picked it up at a car boot for a few £ along with a nice pink pushchair which also got a lot of use (they fight over it now ). His favourite thing to do was to have bits of whatever I was cooking with to put in his pans and cook as well - it was quite handy for keeping him occupied while I made tea .

Play doh was also popular from about 2.

Laura

[KathrynK]

Just typed a big reply and lost it! Grrrrr. It basically said, apart from what you mentioned, Alex's faves include:

Keyboard with stool and microphone (hilarious listening to him sing)
Bricks for building- likes megablocks but loves Clippo
Jigsaws- his absolute obsession
Little people noahs ark with animals
Mr potato head
Any books
Bob the builder stuff
Play kitchen with pretend food

Hope that helps! xxx

[momtonb&ab]

the train set (we have a thomas set) was huge for him from really early on and TBH is still a huge hit.

he also loved the puzzles - and he still really interesting in them thankfully, just bigger ones! 

the toy kitchen (we have the ikea one) was always a giant hit. 

and a bag.  he put things in and out of a bag for hours!!!!!!!!!!!!  so we got him a little toddler suitcase and he would fill it up with his toys and walk around with it then unload and reload.   great entertainment!

[koe2moe]

DS is starting to understand lego (duplo)
he loves tractors and are crazy about crane
food toy and tea set are great
puzzles
books
these soft interlocking soft foam mat (he just takes them apart, throws them around, or gets us to put them back together, he puts in the numbers (like a puzzle) or now he starts to walk around on them.. .maybe will start teaching him the numbers so he can follow the order to walk around)
walking up and down a bean bag (while we're sitting on it)
i'm going to get a kitchen soon
playdoh is great

[*Jo*]

at the moment building blocks and plastic food, I just bought a 144 peice set of plastic food for $25 and he will play with it forever, of course I have to play with him most times but he just loves it and so goes back and forth between those two most of the time

[*Liz*]

Jacob has some mega blok CAT vehicles that he LOVES. He also messes about with duplo now but needs me to keep rebuilding the sets.

Messy play - dry pasta with all those big machines (J calls them that as well  . He scoops and dumps, scoops and dumps etc.

Play kitchen is a hit. He loves his set of chopping vegetables (with the pretend knife that lets you cut through the Velcro).

One way I find works really well at introducing new games is to do fun things to spark an interest first. So, for example, we recently took J to the aquarium after he was caught watching Free Willy on the TV (DH is not the best at supervising the TV use  ). But he wanted to go and see a big whale so we thought some small fish would do. He LOVED the sharks and I brought him some plastic fish for the bath in the gift shop after. That was about a month ago and he is still playing with them all day. I give him a big empty bowl to use as a fish tank. He has stolen any fish he can find out of the baby toys. We also introduced him to Finding Nemo and he plays Nemo a lot now (be careful with this stuff though as some bits are pretty scary for a LO this young). Anyway - I hope you get what I mean here. It is about capturing his imagination and being opportunistic.

He loves his duplo airport - that was a Christmas gift after we had been on holiday on an airplane so he loved it. Opportunistic again  .

Another thing I have got a lot of milage out of is toys that match TV shows - I got a ton of bob the builder and postman pat stuff from car boots and eBay - he watches an episode and then plays with his matching toys. I think watching a show helps fire his imagination for play as he can re-enact it iyswim? We still limit his TV.

Sticker books. He LOVES these. Usborne do some great ones that are a blank scene with a load of stickers to create your own picture from. They do a building site one, farm one, animal one, dinosaur one. Loads of them.

Play dough. There is a great soft stuff set in ELC that makes a farming game, and some of it is easy enough for this age to do. I let J have his little metal tractors etc in it as well  . We were watching some utube clips of tractors 'stuck in the muck' the other days and then J got all his tractors stuck in his play doh and spent ages pretending to pull them out using a load of ribbons and trucks!

I am trying harder to do real good stuff when were are having proper one on one (like crafty stuff) so that he doesn't get bored of the same thing all day. And help him differentiate mummy time from toy time.

[x95stocchier]

Ditto on the play kitchen.  At that age DS loved it.

This is also when we introduced the "beans box".  We got an under bed rubbermaid storage bin and fileld it with dried beans and lentils (rice works too, but beans have different colors and shapes).  It started with spoons and cups, but eventually all his little machines were in there...construction machines hauling and clearing.  Or farm machines plowing rows and harvesting (filling combine with beans).  Even now at 5 he pulls it out from time to time and plays with it for hours.

Another thing similar is a big container of packaging peanuts.  We pretended it was snow and he used his machines to clear paths.