Curious Tots

Boxes

Think out of the box

project developed for Beleduc

Montessori
inspired toys

Shareable pieces
through boxes

Developmental
boxes

A woman and a toddler playing with wooden cow figures of the Curious Tots Boxes by Beleduc.

Modern design with a Montessorian heart

Beleduc’s Curious Tots is a line composed of four boxes, designed for four specific developmental stages:

12-18, 18-24, 24-30, and 30-36 months

Each box includes four engaging, age-appropriate activities, thoughtfully designed to support children’s development across multiple areas.

Created in collaboration with experienced Montessori educators and tested through hands-on play sessions in nurseries, to ensure both quality and playability. The Curious Tots boxes are designed with the aim of nurturing sensory exploration while also encouraging cognitive development, fine motor skills, early language acquisition, and the foundations of storytelling.

Boxes of toys to grow by

Our contribution

Illustration of a magnifying glass over a beige circular background.

Research

Strategy

Line drawing of a light bulb with a yellow background circle, emitting light lines

Concept

Outline drawing of a pencil on a circle, representing writing or editing.

Identity

Illustration of a painter's palette with a paintbrush and a large circular shape in the background.

Design

Simple illustration of two gears in front of a circle background.

Development

Simple illustration of a white ice cube with black outline on a light green circle background, with small lines indicating shine or glow.

Communication

Simple graphic of two overlapping speech bubbles, one in light green and the other in dark gray, on a dark background.
Diagram of a Montessori-style sensory and play activity with interconnected wooden components, laser burn patterns, interchangeable blocks, animal figures, and different configurations for playToys designed for Beleduc.

behind the scenes

~

behind the scenes ~

The first box is designed to spark curiosity through sensory-rich, hands-on play. Each toy invites little ones to explore textures, sounds, shapes, and movement. At this stage, children refine their senses, build motor coordination, and begin developing cognitive skills through active exploration.

The box includes:

  • Wonder box, a sensory box designed to stimulate a child's natural curiosity and support their early exploration through touch, sight, sound, and movement

  • Stack & slide rings, a toy that encourages toddlers to explore rings in various ways, while the engraved patterns on the base offer extra sensory stimulation

  • Match & discover puzzle, a three-piece wooden puzzle, introduces basic geometric shapes (circle, triangle, and square), designed with increasing levels of difficulty to support gradual skill development

  • Sea shakers, a set of fun rattles for early sensory exploration and motor skills

Box 1

12-18 months

First box of the Curious Tots set by Beleduc, including stacking rings, shape sorter, rattles and wooden puzzle.
Colorful wooden children's shapesorter toy with a circular opening, a blue fabric in the middle, and multicolored panels around the sides, from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful children's wooden shape sorter, plush blanket, and soft ball with multicolored tissues from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful wooden children's shapesorter toy with a circular opening, and multicolored panels around the sides, from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Three colorful rattles of an octopus, turtle, and whale from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden shape-sorting toy with colored geometric shapes, including a red circle, a blue triangle, and a green square from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden shape-sorting toy with colored geometric shapes, including a red circle, a blue triangle, and a green square from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful wooden stacker toy with rings from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful wooden stacker toy with rings from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.

The second box is designed to strengthen motor skills through purposeful, hands-on play. Each toy encourages grasping and hand coordination, helping toddlers refine movement and explore with growing independence. It lays the foundation for problem-solving, focus, and physical confidence.

The box includes:

  • Sort & match bench, a playful take on the classic shape sorter, includes a sturdy wooden bench, chunky blocks with holes (also suitable for lacing), and interchangeable shape tiles with increasing difficulty

  • Ready, set… Pop, a push and pop toy that surprises toddlers, while encouraging them to match the correct stick with the correct hole via colour matching

  • Colour mix lenses, a set of three primary colour lenses (red, yellow, blue) with tactile patterns, invite children to explore vision, colour, and light

  • Transfer tweezers, a set that supports fine motor development as children practice their tweezing, transferring, and sorting wooden and textile shapes, together with the laicing activity

Box 2

18-24 months

Second box of the Curious Tots set by Beleduc, including a shaper sorter, a sorting tray, coloured lenses, and a push and pop it toy.
Colorful wooden toy with four pegs from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful geometric shapes and blocks, including squares, circles, and triangles, and a wooden shape sorter from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden toy with three circular colored coloured lenses in blue, yellow, and red, connected by a blue ring from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden toy with three circular colored coloured lenses in blue, yellow, and red, connected by a blue ring from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Various colourful felt geometric shapes used for lacing activity from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful geometric shapes made of wood and felt, including a yellow pair of tongs, felt circles, triangles, squares, and rings with a felt sorting tray from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.

The third box is designed to enrich toddlers’ growing vocabulary through playful, hands-on experiences. Children begin to describe what they see and express simple ideas. Each toy encourages naming, storytelling, and conversation, supporting language alongside fine motor skills, memory, and emotional awareness.

The box includes:

  • Animal match & stack, a set of three wooden cubes (stackable or nestable) and three animal figures (horse, sheep, and dog) to be matched with their corresponding homes

  • Sound memory, a sensory toy that invites toddlers to explore sound through play, includes three pairs of wooden spheres, each filled with a unique sound, that the children need to match

  • Emotions pals, a set of five wooden shapes, each with a screwable head showing a different facial expression, for a simple fine motor challenge

  • Day & night puzzle, a 9-piece double-sided puzzle that introduces toddlers to the rhythm of day and night

Box 3

24-30 months

Third box of the Curious Tots set by Beleduc, including a farm puzzle, wooden figurines with cone hats, small animal figurines, a puzzle, and wooden sound spheres.
Three wooden toy figures with painted faces and colorful felt hats, each with a different facial expression, positioned on colorful blocks from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
A smiling wooden toy figure with a screwable head from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
A small, plastic dog figurine with black ears and a black spot, and a wooden box with dog illustrations from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden toy barn with a small sheep figure and painted hay and sheep decorations from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Stacked wooden toy blocks with numbers 1, 2, and 3 on each block, with colorful accents and cut-out openings from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful wooden sound spheres inside an egg carton from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
A partially assembled children's jigsaw puzzle with farm animals and a farm scene, featuring a horse, cow, chicken, dog, sheep, and barn from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
A colorful wooden puzzle of a barn at night with animals, including a horse, sheep, and dogfrom Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.

The fourth box is designed to support cognitive development through hands-on practical experience. As children think more logically and connect actions to outcomes, they build memory, problem-solving, and symbolic thinking. Each activity encourages exploration, comparison, and cause-and-effect reasoning, nurturing a curious, confident mind.

The box includes:

  • Weighty scale, a simple way to introduce children to early STEM concepts through hands-on exploration of weight, balance, and cause and effect

  • Peg board ladder, a set that encourages coordination, balance, and spatial awareness through hands-on stacking play, compatible with the Weight Scale, allowing playful experiments in weight and size

  • Mystery bag, a set composed of a soft fabric bag that can be filled with the included 3D geometric solids, and 2D matching cards with illustrations of the 3D shapes, that the children need to recognize and match only with their touch

  • Storytelling cards, a 9-piece double-sided wooden tile that shows unique images, designed to be combined in any order, to create creative association rather than fixed sequences

Box 4

30-36 months

Fourth box of the Curious Tots set by Beleduc, including a balance scale, wooden weights, wooden blocks, and wooden storytelling cards
Colorful wooden pegboard ladder from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful wooden pegboard ladder from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Colorful wooden pegboard ladder weights from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Cotton mystery bag with wooden shapes and illustrated cards from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden illustrated story cards from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden illustrated story cards from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden illustrated story cards from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden balance scale toy with blue and natural wood colors from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden balance scale toy with blue and natural wood colors from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.
Wooden balance scale toy with blue and natural wood colors from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.

A playful soft look

The visual style extends the Beleduc colour palette with softer, modern, and playful tones, combined with simple, toddler-friendly primary shapes, designed with irregular, gently rounded edges.

These graphic elements act as subtle visual cues to support intuitive play, where needed, and are applied through both printed details and laser-burn engravings, enhancing the tactile experience.

This cohesive approach ties the entire line together, reinforcing the sense of a product family and allowing elements to be mixed and shared across selected toys in a natural, seamless way.

Colorful moadboard for an educational toy line with rainbow colors, a crawling baby illustration, and various wooden components with smiling faces and color indicators, used for learning colors and shapes.
Development milestones in children from 12 to 36 months, illustrated with four children in different phases of growth and activities, organized by age ranges with corresponding skills listed from Beleduc's Curious Tots boxes.

Educational suggestion

From the outset, this project aimed to create a Montessori-inspired toy line that could be used easily both in nurseries by educators and at home by parents. For this reason, and with the support of experienced Montessori teachers, we developed four dedicated leaflets, one for each box, describing each toy, its main purpose, and suggesting incremental activities that can be proposed to toddlers. These serve as a friendly, accessible guide for educators, whether professional or not.

Set of four cardboard boxes from Beleduc's Curious Tots with colorful labels and printed instructions, each indicating different age groups from 12 to 36 months, along with informational brochures.

Credits: Digital Images from Beleduc