Toys that teach grab and hold children's attention in a way that engages them so fully that learning is effortless.  From baby's first rattle to sophisticated board games, there are toys available to teach almost every subject imaginable.  From core subjects like reading, writing, math, and science to more nuanced topics like social skills, self-awareness, and environmental responsibility, toys teaching all can be found.
 
SOCIAL SKILLS
 
Toys that teach social skills are ideal to introduce during the preschool years.  A child who learns social skills is more likely to respect others, applying listening skills and not acting out in class.  Toys that encourage cooperative play are excellent teaching tools.  Play sets for pretend kitchens, restaurants, and cities are great for encouraging play in a way that lets children discover the impact of their actions, both positive and negative.  Children learn about courtesy, cooperation to achieve a goal, and the importance of communication.
 
SELF-AWARENESS
 
Self-awareness is another important aspect of preparing for learning.  It enables children to express and productively manage their emotions.  Waldorf dolls are one of the best ways for children to learn self-awareness.  They are pleasant-looking, soft-bodied dolls with little facial detail or expression.  They often come with very realistic, very detailed clothing, shoes, and accessories, complete with buttons, laces, and snaps, allowing children to dress them, change them, and engage them in situational play.  The doll's minimal facial expression encourages creativity and allows children to impart their own emotions to the doll, allowing them to identify and work through emotions in play scenarios.  By becoming more self-aware children learn to identify, communicate, and manage their emotions, enabling them to become attentive and active learners.
 
ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY
 
Learning environmental responsibility teaches children responsibility not only for themselves, but also for the world around them.  On a less grand scale, it teaches them to notice details such as setting the thermostat 5 degrees lower, using less water to brush their teeth, and turning lights out when they leave a room.  From dollhouses that come complete with pretend solar panels, rechargeable cars, and recycling bins, to toy cars and rocket kits that run on water and compressed air, more and more toys are appearing that teach children about their carbon footprint.
 
READING
 
Perhaps the biggest step in opening doors to knowledge is learning to read.  From the earliest stages of learning letters and words, toys for teaching children reading abound.  Baby blocks decorated with letters introduce reading concepts early in life.  Picture books with single images and a single word beneath each enable children to first play at reading, and then associate the pictures and words sufficiently to "read" them.  Repeated reading of memorizable stories and nursery rhymes encourages children to continue to "read," and the teaching of letters and their phonetic sounds helps them begin to sound out words on their own.  Toys emphasizing nursery rhymes, stories, letters and their sounds are available as baby blocks, traditional books, electronically read books, children's videos, video games, and computer software. 
 
WRITING
 
The earliest stages of writing begin with wonderful brightly colored scribbles, artwork which inevitably ends up on kitchen walls.  Two words here – washable crayons.  Soon it's time to start writing letters.  Practice makes perfect, and there are no better toys for learning writing than those that allow children to practice (preferably not on the kitchen walls).  Electronic notepads which first demonstrate on a small screen how a letter is written, then let children try, are an easy way to entice children to practice letter writing.  Workbooks that incorporate games such as zigzag mazes and tracing shapes make practicing fun, and reusable mats that let children write on them with nothing more than a water-filled pen let children practice letter writing again and again without using paper.
 
MATH
 
Math lends its concepts easily to toys.  Early math is especially concrete, with definitive answers that can be visually illustrated.  A colorful wooden abacus is visually stimulating and surprisingly easy to use to first teach counting and later teach addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  Building sets also make excellent teaching toys, useful for teaching addition, subtraction, measuring, and eventually more complicated concepts such as volume and area. 
 
SCIENCE
 
Logic and reason are the bases of science, and while they might seem complicated subjects, toys that teach these skills can be among the first introduced into play.  Even a baby's rattle encourages children to learn the cause and effect between the shaking and sound.  For preschoolers, construction toys, such as dump trucks, front loaders, and cranes with levers and pulleys, reinforce learning about cause and effect and teach the scientific concept of producing increased work with less effort.
 
TEACHING TOYS
 
When learning is fun, children want to learn.  Toys that teach need to remain fun to be most effective.  A toy that is no longer fun is no longer a toy, but has simply become a tool for work.