Top Seven First Toys Your Baby Needs

Parents, especially first time parents, often wonder which toys are essential for their baby's development. There are many toys that are considered educational, but if you're trying to cover all bases without breaking the bank, there are several basic toys that you can buy. Here's a short list to help you out.

1. Baby gym
Benefits: different colors and contrasts help baby learn to focus, different textures help him learn to differentiate how they feel. Bottom line - easy toy that has huge developmental benefits: focus, hand eye coordination, color and texture recognition etc. Babies especially enjoy gyms with sounds.

2. Blocks
Benefits: proven toy that helps with hand-eye coordination, creativity, cause and effect recognition and dexterity. As baby stacks, knocks down and throws blocks, he learns more than we can imagine about the world that surrounds him. As he gets older, blocks grow with him and provide him with hours and hours of play as he learns to construct more complicated structures, or - if blocks come with letters - spell words.

3. Nesting toys
Benefits: hand-eye coordination, spatial development, motor skills. Nesting toys come in a variety of shapes: nesting blocks, nesting balls, nesting cups etc. They encourage active play as the baby stacks them, puts them inside one another etc.

4. Rattles
Benefits: besides soothing him and making him laugh, rattles provide the benefit of hand-eye coordination. Bottom line - this is just something every baby should have.

5. Mirror
That's right - a good old crib mirror is one of the best things you can provide for your developing baby. She will watch herself laugh, frown, wink and cry. She will start making connections and learning basic social skills - recognition of emotions. You can find the most adorable gender-adopted crib mirrors on the market these days.

6. Soft toys with a variety of colors and textures.
We've all seen them - cute colorful animals with mirrors on their paws, silky ears, plastic legs; part hard, part squishy; with one leg stuffed with a squeaky ball and another - with a bell.
Benefits: these are some of the best early toys, helping your baby develop focus, color recognition, texture recognition, hand-eye coordination - basically all 5 senses.

7. Shape sorters
Shape sorters develop dexterity as the baby explores shapes and colors and how things fit together. They also help kids learn cause and effect as they match different shapes.

While there are many other toys available, these are the basics that you should purchase for your baby.