On Wednesday 18th March 2020, it was announced that all schools in the UK would be closing on the 20th, and while many pupils may have jumped up and down at the news, we know that a small part of them will be missing the classroom, even if they won't admit it to their parents!

In the weeks following this announcement we noticed a 32% rise in web traffic to our Educational Toy category, with parents eager to find new and entertaining ways of helping their children to continue learning outside of the classroom.

The most popular educational toy we have sold so far has been pairs of rainbow diffraction glasses. These simple spectacles are great for teaching children about light, as they create quite the display of colour when used with artificial light around the house.

There has also been a big interest in practical kits for children, allowing them to get hands on and have fun, whether they're studying biology with a butterfly breeding kit, physics with a set of magnets or learning about geology with fossil digging kits.

Educational toys

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The top 10 most popular educational toys are:

  1. Rainbow diffraction glasses
  2. Fun time tape measure
  3. Illuminated globe
  4. Educational laptop
  5. Crystal gems digging kit
  6. Robotic hand
  7. Gold panning kit
  8. Live butterfly garden - Butterfly breeding kit
  9. Creative magnets kit
  10. Augmented reality dinosaur flashcards

When we correlated the data against the delivery addresses it was revealed that Manchester is set to have the highest number of future robotics engineers after the robotic hand was the most popular toy ordered in the city. Whereas in Hull there could be an influx of budding palaeontologists in years to come after having the highest sales of the dinosaur flashcards.

Liverpool is likely to be home to the most intrepid explorers (or geography teachers) in the future with the illuminated globe being the number one educational toy in town, while Cardiff is looking to enjoy a gold rush as potential Cardiffian prospectors have been gearing up with the most gold panning kits.

Young Londoners look likely to lead the charge in conservation with the live butterfly garden being most popular in England's capital.

Cas Paton, founder and CEO of OnBuy said,

"It was undoubtedly a scary moment for parents all around the UK when they found out that the schools would be closing for the next few months and that they would have to quickly adapt to becoming their child's new supply teacher.

"It has been nice to see parents find inventive ways to help with learning outside of the classroom and who knows, some of these kids could discover newfound passions for subjects that they had no interest in before with traditional teaching methods. Your bespoke approach to teaching could be helping to create the next Brian Cox or maybe even the next David Attenborough!"

To view our full range of educational toys visit here.