When the time comes to shift your baby purchases from nursery room-focused to educational, the sheer volume of learning games, STEAM toys and play sets to sort through and evaluate is overwhelming. Not to mention, it can get costly if you try to purchase every vetted educational system friends recommend. Luckily, Lovevery, the team who brought us the popular Play Gym and subscription Play Kits, has designed a comprehensive block set that’s brilliantly thought out.

What comes in the Lovevery Block Set?

The Lovevery Block Set is an entire system of 70 wood pieces, all designed to work together to create 20 stage-based challenges and activities. If you’re like me and get overwhelmed at looking—and stepping on—toys scattered throughout the living room on any given day, think about this kit as a gift to you, mama; it’s essentially 20 activities in one beautiful wooden box.

Related: The Lovevery Playshelf is Perfect for Your Montessori-Inspired Space

What do kids do with the Lovevery Block Set?

Whether you have an 18-month-old or 4-year-old, they can do things like build a car using the storage box the blocks are housed in or make a slide and learn about gravity by using the lid and the magnetic disks that come inside. There are physical challenges, too, like hurdles that kids build using the same magnetic disks and string. It’s open-ended play that’s all about creating a nurturing environment for brain development. Think about it like this: Instead of buying a block set for them to learn hand-and-eye coordination and a separate set of shapes for them to learn matching, you just have to buy the single set.

It’s beautiful

You’d be hard-pressed to find a parent saying their kid’s toys are beautiful, but this block set is well made and impressive, so I’ll say it: It’s a beauty. When the box first arrived at our home, I was surprised at how heavy it was. Most toys are plastic and flimsy. Like all of the other Lovevery products, the box comes with a simple-to-understand visually-driven guide that shows you how to use each item. If you’re like me and look at a mound of 70 blocks and don’t instantly see 20 different creations to build, you’ll especially appreciate the guide.

Related: 10 block sets that boost baby and toddler brains

What I value most about having this in the house, aside from it being truly beautiful in all of its wooden and slightly pastel-hued glory, is that we’ve had it for almost a year and we still use it. There’s probably no other toy in the house that gets that much love, save for a dancing Mickey Mouse whose ears light up. Just the other day I showed my toddler how to use the box lid to create a slide for the disks to roll down and I got to watch her take that instruction further, playing with the angle of the slide and directions of the disks. Boom—she just learned cause and effect.

Is the Lovevery Block set worth it?

If you only compare this to other blocks, the Lovevery set has a much higher price tag. But it replaces 19 other toys you’ll likely end up buying, so you’ll save money and declutter your home in the process.

wooden block set

Lovevery

$140

The Block Set

Can a block set be brilliant? This set answers with a resounding ‘yes.’ Crafted by child development experts, this science-based system of 70 heirloom-quality pieces unlocks STEM concepts like math, physics, and engineering, along with higher-order planning and problem-solving.

A version of this story was published August 27, 2020. It has been updated.