The best toddler learning activity books

In this digital age, it can be very easy for your little ones to spend many hours playing on tablets and watching TV. If you're looking for a great boredom-buster away from the screens, why not consider toddler learning activity books for your mini-me? They are a great activity that you and your child can do together and are guaranteed to encourage a few hours of wholesome fun.

Learning activity books provide the perfect balance of creative play and educational learning. They will allow your child to improve on skills such as reading, counting, and problem-solving. They also ensure there is plenty of enjoyment in the activities and puzzles. This is so they do not feel like too much hard work for your little one's brains and, more importantly, keep the learning side of things fun.

What are the benefits of toddler learning activity books?

Encouraging your toddler to use learning books is good for their development and can help boost their confidence in key skills. Toddler learning activity books can help your child with their fine motor skills by holding pens, whether that is by tracing a letter, colouring in a shape, or writing down a number.

What will your toddler learn?

These books will help them recognise the alphabet, numbers, and shapes, which are all things that children will be learning as they journey through pre-school into early primary years.

Your child will also feel a sense of personal accomplishment from completing the activities and learning through fun.

Don't forget - you will also benefit from spending quality time with your little one by being on hand to help them understand the fun challenges they face and offer support if they need it.

To help you choose the book that best suits your child's needs, we've put together a list of the best toddler learning activity books.

Big Letter Tracing is great for introducing little ones to writing the alphabet and numbers. There is one letter or number per page, with directional arrows to guide your toddler in the right direction.

Review: "This book is brilliant. It is around A4 in size, I expected it to be a lot smaller! Loads of blank space to practise around. I love the fact there is a certificate in the back for when your child has finished! Numbers and shapes are also included. Most learning books have small tracing letters and numbers so it's nice to find one with a larger print. Very happy with my purchase."

Get your mini-me used to controlling a pen with this easy learning book by Collins. It starts with simple straight lines and builds up to more complicated zig-zag patterns. Best of all, you can wipe clean, so your toddler can practise again and again.

Review: "My child is starting school in Sept, so I wanted to prepare her. I started doing an hour or two a day of learning. I have incorporated this book into our daily planner. She’s never had to focus on pen control before. She usually just uses colouring books and notebooks to scribble all over. This is a good way to introduce felt pens in the hopes she doesn’t get it all over her - so far, so good. She especially enjoys the mazes in the book. They teach her to stay in the lines, which she usually struggles to do. We got this about 2 days ago and she’s picked it up really quickly. Overall, a good teaching tool that we can keep using over and over again."

The best toddler learning activity books combine fun with learning, and this toddler colouring book certainly does that. There are illustrations of shapes and numbers for toddlers to identify and unleash their inner artist on.

Review: "Very well illustrated throughout with an excellent display of characters. The fun the children had drawing these pictures and learning their alphabet was brilliant. It's a great book with a good understanding of what children like and can clearly understand. I would highly recommend it to others 👍"

There are lots of early learning activities for toddlers to do in this wipe-clean book. They can practise writing, counting, telling the time, and drawing animals.

Review: "This is a very good wipe-clean book for my 2.5-year-old son. It comes with a marker pen, which is very easy to wipe off with a tissue. There are lots and lots of activities inside that you can talk about, draw and write about. My son and I love it!"

With over 250 pages of fun learning activities for your toddler, this book is great value for money.

Review: "This book is packed with a lot of interesting activities (writing, numbers, letters, cognitive activities). My son loves it. Maybe it would be better if it was a wipe-clean activity book so it can be answered more than once. However, this book is worth buying for kids."

This is a great wellbeing book for kids and is a great tool to help toddlers build their emotional-social skills. It encourages them to colour in the monster to reflect how they might be feeling when doing certain activities.

Review: "I used this book along with the colour monster storybook to help young children who have problems expressing emotions. It is a brilliant way to help them think about times when they are sad etc. You can then discuss how to cope with those emotions. I really recommend this book."

The Collins Numbers book will give you a hand in getting your child excited about numbers. There are number-based mazes and number tracing for your little ones, with prompts on the page for you to aid them with their learning. There's also a certificate for you to fill in when your toddler has completed the book.

Review: "Useful pre-school ‘NUMBERS’ book. Simple and easy to use. My 3+yr old enjoys learning with the book. He recognises his numbers 1 to 10 and is able to calculate simple additions with the aid of colourful illustrations. The content is most suited to 3-4-year-olds. Affordable price, packaged excellently, and delivered on time."

Your mini Picassos will love colouring in the animals in this bumper colouring book. It will help toddlers to start identifying all different types of wildlife as each picture includes the animal name.

Review: "Brilliant book for toddlers. Images aren't too intricate and they don't have too many lines to follow. The pictures are clear and big and there are lots of animals to choose from to colour in. Excellent value for money."

Related: 10 best toddler colouring books to help build skills and confidence

This toddler activity book is the number one bestseller in children's books for school and education. Kiddies can learn letters alongside objects that start with the same letter, as well as numbers and shapes.

Review: "Great book to introduce toddlers to letters and numbers. It's a fun way for them to learn by colouring it."

Engage your mini-space fans in counting with this learning activity book. They can count down the aliens, spaceships, stars, and planets while having some out-of-this-world fun.

This dot-to-dot book will help young learners with pen control and number recognition. Kiddies can keep completing the puzzles to build up their confidence with this wipe-clean book.

Review: "This starts from 5 and goes up to 20. There are 6 pages of numbers up to 5; 7 pages of numbers up to 10 and 7 pages of numbers up to 20. It helps to boost little ones' confidence. The last two pages have letters and numbers to trace. Easy to wipe off as well. My 3-year-old enjoys using this."