The best toys for six year old boys and girls will build on the skills they have already learnt, help them overcome new challenges, encourage cooperation and sharing with other children and continue to foster their imaginations and sense of freedom and fun!
Obviously a good toy is one that a child will love to play with again and again. But unlike baby toys or sensory toys that younger children love, toys for six year old boys and girls will also support another important aspect of being this young, tender age – friendships and group play.
Best toys for 6 year olds 2021
Waboba Moon Ball
Age Suitability: 5 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £5.99
Simple social games like playing with a ball, hoops or skittles never fail to please children and allow them to play in groups of friends their own age.
Toys that can be played with outside in the garden or in a park have the double benefit of helping kids burn off energy and getting them out of the house for a bit while they play!
LEGO City Town Fire Chief Response Truck Set
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £16.99
Cars, trucks, trains, trams, boats, barges – you name it, your six year old will love playing with it if it’s a construction toy.
Magic Maths Game by Orchard Toys
Age Suitability: 5 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £9.60
Help little ones learn addition, subtraction and multiplication with this fun maths and sums ‘magic’ game that gives maths a spellbinding twist. Tested by teachers and one of Orchard Toy’s best-selling toys for 6 year olds, kids will love that you have to rub the cards to ‘magically’ reveal the answer.
Galt Toys Fab Foil Art
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £3.94
Six year olds will love receiving an art set as a new toy and the potential to keep them occupied for hours, engrossed in creating and making, is high.
Whether it’s making mosaic pictures, painting a model they can then play with afterwards, learning about different textiles and materials with foil or felt art kits or discovering the joys of making something they can wear like bracelets or T-shirt painting, there are so many different ways to keep kids entertained with art set toys.
Learning Resources Botley The Coding Robot Action Challenge Accessory Kit
Age Suitability: 5 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £16
Believe it or not, but kids of this age are more than ready to learn the basic skills needed to code. This kit makes learning the basics of coding into a game. Kids won’t even realise they are learning while they play and will enjoy the challenges and puzzles.
My First Picture Atlas Children’s Book
Age Suitability: 4 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £4.86
Children at this age are getting to grips with the world of reading and so sitting with them while they look at books or reading to them is vital to encouraging the development of this essential skill.
Kids will love the pictures and beautifully illustrated maps in this book that accompany the text and the information collected here provides a basis from which all children can learn to explore their world.
Wooden Mini Guitar
Age Suitability: 3 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £45
Age 6 is a wonderful time to introduce children to their first, real musical instrument (in miniature size!). Where as toddlers they may have shown a love of music through musical toys, play mats or plastic toy instruments, by the age of six kids have developed the fine motor skills and hand-to-eye coordination needed to begin learning the basics of playing a musical instrument for real. This gorgeous toy makes a lovely gift because it can also be personalised.
First Pottery Set
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £12.99
Anything that helps kids create stuff and encourages them to be creative and create something themselves makes a great toy for a six year old.
Pottery making and painting kits are great for continuing to develop fine motor skills and hand-to-eye coordination, as well as continuing to encourage a child’s individual creativity and expression.
LEGO Doll House with Swimming Pool
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £47.99
Toys that help with problem-solving are always a fail-safe bet when it comes to buying gifts for kids.
As they reach the age of six and older, swap the building blocks they enjoyed playing with as toddlers to more mechanical, technical building toys such as Lego that also inspires imaginative play.
Science Lab Kit for kids
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £12.43
Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) toys are great for children of this age to help inspire an interest in these subjects and foster some early skills that will help them later on in school.
Fun science experiment kits for kids make some of the best STEM toys for six year olds as they can get stuck in to messy play whilst learning some of the most basic and fundamental principals of science and the way the world works.
Hatchimals
Age Suitability: 3 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £19.49
Most parents will be familiar with Hatchimals because kids just LOVE them. They’re cute, cuddly and collectable – three things that really appeal to children at this age. These new ‘HatchiBuddies’ are cuddly versions of the original Hatchimals characters and there are 24 to collect.
Pokémon cards
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £13.99
While we’re on the topic of toys that can be collected, no list of top toys for 6 year olds would be complete without Pokémon cards. These collectable cards are also great for encouraging group play. We love this set at the cards come in a Poké Ball Tin.
Magic Sand Studio play kit
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £24.99
Sand play toys are great for encouraging creativity and facilitating pretend play in children of this age.
Magic sand sets that let children design their own sand sculptures and structures, work with different colours of sand, cut, mould, shape and create are great for moving sand play away from pre-school sand-pit style activities and into a more grown up arts and craft play for six year olds.
Planets XXL Puzzle
Age Suitability: 6 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £9.99
Toys that help with problem-solving are great for six year olds and puzzles are the perfect example of a toy which will keep them engaged and entertained while building on those skills.
If you pick a puzzle with an educational picture on that they can learn from too – think the solar system, a map of the world or even illustrations of dinosaurs if your child loves dinos – then even better!
The Floor is Lava game
Age Suitability: 5 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £14.99
Stop kids leaping on the furniture whilst playing ‘the floor is lava’ with this game version of the popular challenge. Spin the spinner to choose your colour, then leap across the foam game tiles to safety. 27 action cards ramp-up the fun on this classic game of imagination and adventure. The aim of the game? Don’t touch the floor!
Marble Run Toy
Age Suitability: 4 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £17.99
STEM-related toys that involved children building their very own contraptions, from marble runs to geometric towers, are good to introduce to kids at the age of 6. Children will enjoy the challenge of putting together the pieces in the set and learn new skills along the way.
Polly Pocket Mega Mall
Age Suitability: 4 years + | Batteries required: None | Price: £39.99
Polly Pocket has an enduring appeal that has lasted decades already. The tiny toy range is still loved by kids today and 6 year olds will adore this play set that comes with six floors, an elevator, themed stores and accessories.
What do 6 year olds like to play with?
By the age of six, friendships are very important to your child. Most children prefer to play in same sex groups, where girls tend to spend their time with one or two best friends, while boys prefer to be part of a large group.
The best toys for six year old boys and girls will enable this style of play and help kids develop their developing bonds and friendships. Any of the toys for 6 year olds listed above will be great for kids of this age to play with!
What are good activities for 6 year olds?
Coming up with activities to entertain kids all day can be exhausting, especially as they get slightly older and they have more energy, more questions and a greater ability to do more in a day.
Luckily, by the age of 6, kids have mastered independent play and are ready for a little more freedom – so not every one of their games and activities has to include you. Although that doesn’t mean a child won’t want you to be involved all the time!
Norland Nanny and founder of The Nanny Louenna app, Louenna Hood has also shared with us what activities and toys she has found particularly effective for entertaining 6-year-old kids with:
- Make your own story book – plan and design the beginning, middle and end of a story, then draw illustrations to match each page.
- They love outdoor treasure hunts – by the age of six they are often able to read simple instructions so you can write out some riddles to get them to the next clue and leave a small prize at the end.
- Painting – I often set up watercolour painting stations outdoors and ask children to paint what they see. It could be a landscape or an object. Painting by numbers is always popular at this age too.
- Homemade play doh – You can make this with simple ingredients, just flour, baking soda, water and olive oil, and it is super fun. Mix the ingredients together, make shapes and then when you think all the fun is finished, make the dough into a pizza base and enjoy homemade pizzas for lunch.