Learning Table — Playskool toddler learning toys on the playroom floor

The table rather than the floor

This mat is the table rather than the floor: boards, cards, puzzles and the handful of table games that come with their own rules. The common thread is that a child can work alone on them for a while, which is the quiet half hour everybody is actually buying.

The Magnatab corner

Magnatab boards get their own corner. A magnetic stylus pulls beads up through a sealed surface, so the tracing leaves a line without leaving a mark, and there is nothing to spill, replace or lose except the stylus on its string.

Cards and workbooks that survive a page turn

Flash cards and workbooks here are the pre-school kind — upper case first, lower case alongside, numbers to twenty, colours and first words. They are printed on card thick enough to survive being bent back on itself, which is how a three-year-old turns a page.

Letter boards, number puzzles and matching games are where the Playskool name earned its school half. A Playskool table set is meant to be worked out without a grown-up reading the lid aloud, and the Playskool habit of printing the age on the front makes this the easiest mat for parents to shop blind.

It plays well alongside other boxes rather than demanding the whole carpet. Explorers mix it into whatever game is already running, and the fun comes from the mixing.

It shares a bin with the blocks, which is the usual Playskool arrangement: one deep box, nothing sorted, everything washable. Parents get a toy that goes back in without a diagram, and the Playskool moulding takes the knocks that come with that.