Toddlers: Warm Weather Favorites

This slide is the perfect height for toddlers. It is sturdy, only a few steps, wide enough on top for them to maneuver their bodies onto, and folds up for storage. Before we got a Pikler Triangle in my house, we kept this slide inside during the cold months to get some much needed big movement out and was able to easily fold it away when we didn't want it out.

If your toddler is really into jumping like my two are, this trampoline is honestly a must have! With the handle bar for support, you can keep this indoors or outdoors to get so much energy out.

This is another one of those things that grows with your child as it can get taller as needed. This will meet your toddlers internal need to put objects into holes. We absolutely love ours.

If your toddler is a spinner, this will definitely be a hit. We love ours as it is lightweight, can be kept outdoors, and is easier for our toddlers to use.

This bike is the sole reason my daughter was able to start riding a pedal bike with no training wheels shortly after turning 3 years old without any assistance or teaching. She started at 18 months old and my son started at 14 months old. I would say the ideal time to start is about 6 months after they take their first steps. The Strider 12 is great for 1-3 year olds and is what I would start with. We were able to pass my daughter's down to our son when she upgraded at 3 years old, but she could have still ridden it for another year. It adjusts in height very easily to super low for a 1 year old to higher for a preschool aged chid. This is the brand we have and love, and I highly recommend it to everyone we know.

This the brand of helmet we use for both of my toddlers. We started using my son's at 14 months and my daughter still uses the same kind at 3.5 years old. It is adjustable for head circumference in the back. and the straps adjust as well. It is well made and sturdy. 

We have this gardening set and love it. The gloves are the perfect size for a toddler (about 2-5 years old) and the size of the tools are perfect for gardening with little hands. The watering can is also a good size for a toddler. The bag and gloves can get wet, but shouldn't be left out in the rain as they will get moldy and faded over time.

This wheelbarrow is the perfect size and weight for a toddler. My son got it for his first birthday and was able to use it pretty quickly (as an early walker). He can use it to collect anything he finds in our yard or in nature and to move it around our yard. We've also used it to carry piles of leaves and pumpkins to discard. 

These are super easy to use for toddlers and the perfect size for any bird watching, cloud watching, moon staring, or airplane hunting. We love to take it on walks with us to explore.

This was such a fun kit to use. They have other kinds as well. It is super easy to use with a toddler and keeps everything neat and organized. If it is super windy, I would keep it inside though because it is lightweight and will blow over. My child used a small spray bottle to spray it daily to keep it from being overwatered.

I do not have these specific ones, but we have similar ones that we absolutely love. Similar to having a child sized broom inside the home, having child sized tools like these for the outdoors can help your child take a real, active role in the practical life tasks of your yard.

We have this on the window of our school room. I'd only love it more if a bird would make a nest inside of it, but maybe this spring will be the year! I can't comment much other than that since we've never seen it used in action, but if a bird were to use it we would get a really great lesson on the life cycle of birds and how they grow in the real world.

I do not have this one because I already owned one, but my children have used these ones specifically in their nature class and they're the perfect size. We keep ours outside so if we see something outside we want to investigate further, we can easily do so! They are great to encourage toddlers to stop and really focus on the small details of things in their environment.

I do not have this specific one, but I have used several like it in my classroom. This does not come with the caterpillars, but you can order them separately and then use this to watch them transform into a butterfly inside your very home. The caterpillars and food can be purchased after this for about $8-$10. After watching them grow, you can release them outside your home and save the kit for the next spring season to use every year. Along with this you can then read books about the life cycle of a butterfly and use the small objects in the language section of this post to review what you learned about the life cycle. This is how you connect the concrete to the abstract.

We absolutely love our picnic table! It is used for an easy outdoor lunch (yay, no inside mess to clean), water play, an outdoor sensory table, sand play, and anything else you can think of. It comes with this cute umbrella that helps to provide some shade. This table is just the best.

This was a pandemic summer purchase because it was so insanely cheap that I could not pass it up. Considering it is still very inexpensive, I would jump on this! It works as well as any other splash pad and helps keep the kids cool all summer. It's about to enter its 4th summer still working great. The valve to attach your hose to is a little tricky for me to set up, but my husband is always able to do it easily.

If you are about to be in a pool with your toddler who cannot swim independently, THIS is what you need. I was told by my daughter's swim instructor to not purchase a puddle jumper or floaties because they actually makes it harder for them to learn to swim because it restricts their arm movements as oppose to this that just holds their core up and allows them to freely move everywhere else. My daughter looked like a little fish in this all last summer while I held my little guy so I cannot recommend this enough!

The outdoor item you didn't know how much you needed. Excellent for children to clean with (your outdoor windows, their outdoor toys, your car, anything), spray the sidewalk, spray each other, or spray chalk to make chalk paint. This is such an inexpensive, versatile tool to help build finger strength for later writing. I love this pack specifically because it comes in different colors so you could assign one color to each kid or one color for each part of your home and outdoor space you wish to keep them in so your toddler knows where to return each bottle to. Talk about an easy way to help prepare your toddler enivironment.

We use ours in the bath and then once they get that questionable film on them, we order new ones and bring these outdoors for water play. These can be used at that water picnic table, in a regular water table, at the pool, in that splash pad, with a hose, in your mud kitchen, or wherever else they have access to water. The cups stack up, but also have different numbers and designs of holes on the bottom of the cups which changes the flow of water coming out the bottom.

These are another great tool to work those little fingers to help strengthen their fine motor skills for later writing. These giant eye droppers are easier to use for little ones and  are great for transferring water. You can fill different containers of water with different colored water to try mixing the colors to make new colors. These would be a fun addition to the mud kitchen or to a water sensory table as well.

I absolutely love Ruffle Butts/Rugged Butts bathing suits! They are the only ones I buy because I can buy my children coordinating bathing suits, they are really good quality, they are UPF 50+, and they come in a variety of styles. They also tend to have pretty good end of season sales. We also have a cover up and sun hat from them that I was able to monogram that was very cute and well made as well!

After experiencing some of these change from baby or egg to full adult in real life, these objects are great to help order and manipulate the steps they saw in these creatures life cycles. I have this kit and while I haven't used them yet with my children, the quality looks really well done and the pieces are bigger than I thought they would be.

While they are definitely more expensive than any other plastic toy animals I've seen on the market, their quality and attention to detail are hard to beat. They are sized well in comparison to one another, have the prints that the actual animal would have, and many often have veins and other small details that just make them superior. I love to use them for not only open ended play, but for language learning of the animals names, but also learning the parts of the animals names, and comparing their prints in dough.

I do not have this set, but I love the life cycle of the plant objects and these flowers to be used as language objects. After growing real plants and flowers, they would be great to match the process, order them in their life cycle, and learn the names of the types of these types of flowers. 

Not all of these puzzles in this set have to do with warmer weather, and I really don't care. You need these yesterday. Underneath each picture is something related to the picture, like under the animals it has their baby animal counterparts, under the food it shows what the inside of that food looks like, under the vehicles it shows where they go to, and under the birds and the insects it shows where they live. They are great for matching and learning deeper about these things and just such high quality with beautiful, realistic pictures.

Safari Toobs like this one or the backyard birds next to this one are not only great quality, but lend themselves so well to learning new names, matching to picture cards, doing 3 period lessons, and just giving your toddler something physical to manipulate while you learn about these topics.

I spoke of Safari Toobs under the fruit and vegetables next to this, but these are also really great to use when bird watching and listening to the bird calls of these specific birds to really involve multiple senses to this learning.

This story is interactive in that it asks the reader to do different actions to the tree to help it move through its life cycle through the seasons. Its very cute and a good length on each page for this age.

A rhyming story about siblings during a rainy day. Very quick read, engaging cute story.

All Around Bustletown is one of my favorite series of books. It tells you a little about each character and then you get to follow along with them as they move from scene to scene during this season. It is wordless other than introducing the characters so it is a great book for search and find, to provide the child with new vocabulary as you point to the different things seen throughout the book, and allows for a lot of conversations, predictions, and comprehension skills.  

All Around Bustletown is one of my favorite series of books. It tells you a little about each character and then you get to follow along with them as they move from scene to scene during this season. It is wordless other than introducing the characters so it is a great book for search and find, to provide the child with new vocabulary as you point to the different things seen throughout the book, and allows for a lot of conversations, predictions, and comprehension skills. 

This is one of those books that your kid will love at different stages for different reasons for years to come. Each page tells all about different backyard birds and on the side you can listen to the bird's song. We love to take this book outside and try to match the sounds of the birds in our own backyard to the birds in the book. This book is great in conjunction with the kid binoculars and the Safari toob with backyard birds.

Poetry books are great to learn rhyming skills and rhythm in a story. This book will add value to your home by also teaching about different things that are happening in nature in the Springtime in a very cute way.

I have not actually seen this book in person, but we own several of these Montessori books and they are great because they are simple and easy to follow along. This one tells of how a seed grows into a plant.

All Eric Carle stories are just the best. This Eric Carle story is definitely a lengthier one, but it's great for explaining how seeds travel before they grow and then how they grow. The front of this book also includes seeded paper to grow their own plant which is makes a great text to world connection to deepen their comprehension of the story!

This is probably my favorite new find of the year! This book is not only illustrated beautifully, but gives vocabulary of different types of trees, plants, and flowers, shows how trees grow fruit, explains the job of bees, names the different colors in the rainbow on each page, provides opportunities to count different numbers of bees on each page, and shows how plants grow.

Not only do these books pair perfectly with some of the language objects I shared, but these types of books are often filled with simple sentences that give great, easy to understand content vocabulary which is perfect for this age.

I somehow do not own this book, but I have read it many times and I love how much conversation about gardening , types of flowers, and names of colors can come from this story. 

I searched high and low for a water bottle that doesn't spill at all AND fits in my children's car seat cup holder. THIS is the only one we have used for years now and I swear by it. The straw does get a little funky after a while with daily use and the design on the outside does wear off so I try to replace them about every 6-12 months. They are made of metal so they don't break and keep drinks cool for long periods of time.

This is the only sunscreen we use. It is more expensive than others, but I think it is worth it. It has cleaner ingredients, has zinc oxide without being super hard to blend in, is water resistant, and just works. My kids with sensitive skin have had no skin issues when using this stuff year after year.

If you're looking for shoes that had a wide toe box to aid with your child's foot development and shoes that come in half sizes , these are it! I love this company and my children exclusively only wear their shoes. They keep your child's shoe size on record on the website which makes shopping easy. They do not wear down easily so they last for the entire life of that shoe size. We also own sneakers, rain boots, and hightop fur filled shoes by them that I would also recommend. Also, the rain boots do not come with an arch or a heel which is also ideal for a child's developing foot.

I did not use these for my toddlers but I did use it with my son as a baby and they lasted a long time and weren't easily able to be ripped off. They have a pretty good sized brim to keep the sun off their face and neck which is ideal on sunny days. They come in many different fabrics as well!

I have been using these for the last few years and while it is hard to know if it's working, I also know that when my kids have these on I definitely hear less complaints about insects bothering them than times I haven't. I usually do one sticker on their back near the top half of their body and one near the bottom depending on the situation. I usually put it on their backs so they don't peel it off after seeing me stick it on.

Tis the season for scraped knees and magic boo boos. Y'all. Not only are these the cutest bandages I've ever seen, they come in a wide variety of colors and sizes and DO NOT JUST COME OFF. They do when you need them to, but they last. They don't peel off in water or get just plain weird.