Stacking cups

Simple stacking cups are inexpensive and old-fashioned. But a wonderful toy. In the beginning, babies simply pick them up, chew them and bang them on the table, but soon you can play lots of games with them.

Build a tower, then let the baby knock it down. You are teaching hand eye co-ordination, and building and sorting skills. When you say "oh no...the tower fell down" and then rebuild the tower, you are modelling resilience, i.e. the ability to meet a challenge and overcome it.

Stacking cups are also lots of fun to hide little things underneath. For example, "Where's the raisin? Is it under the blue cup or the red one?" "Can you find the rattle?" etc.