Our Story

Discovery Toys is the premier learning toy company dedicated to helping early childhood development through Play. A trusted brand for over 40 years, we specialize in premium quality, kid-powered learning products for children ranging from newborns to school-aged children. We also prioritize a play experience that provides children with the fundamental skills, curiosity, and passion that leads to learning success in their school years and beyond.  The company began when an early childhood educator, Lane Nemeth, first brought together a group of dedicated teachers, mothers, and parents to take on the critical topic of education for children through play. 

Our Mission

Discovery Toys helps kids learn and grow through play by offering the most outstanding developmental toys, books and games available. 

Our Products

Discovery Toys products are designed with the understanding that children learn best through hands-on, kid-powered play, as attested over decades by Piaget, Montessori, Peter Gray, and many other child development experts. From birth to school age, children learn best through physically interacting with the environment and using all of their senses to build new knowledge. More recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that child-directed play is fundamentally important for learning 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving, collaboration, and creativity. 1

DT combines multiple levels of learning in every toy, with safety and quality standards beyond the national standards. As many of our customers and Product Advisors can testify, a Discovery Toys product is not a typical educational toy that you can find at your local toy shop. Each Discovery Toys product incorporates multiple “Layers of Learning” to empower the child to grow and advance with the product. These “Layers of Learning” complement well the scaffolding approach to education, with parents or other adults encouraged through included activity guides to support the early childhood development of progressive skills and eventual independent learning.

Our team works carefully with our design and manufacturing partners to incorporate a unique play experience into each of our products, an experience that stimulates multiple centers in the brain simultaneously. This experience helps to hard-wire the processes the child will use to develop and master skills and to solve problems into their developing brain, including:

  • Early Reasoning
  • Motor Skills
  • Sensory Integration
  • Observation
  • Focus/Listening
  • Cause & Effect
  • Executive Functioning
  • Divergent Thinking
  • Social/Emotional

We also believe that playing with Discovery Toys products will instill curiosity, invite collaboration, and foster a love of learning. We hope to help each child develop fundamental skills and passion for future learning success and innovative thinking.

From the very beginning of our company, our product focus has been on the Process, not the Content. We believe it is more important for a child to learn the skills and processes he or she will need to be a successful learner in later years. Our approach has been validated with this 2018 recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics: Instead of focusing solely on academic skills, such as reciting the alphabet, early literacy, using flash cards, engaging with computer toys, and teaching to tests, cultivating the joy of learning through play is likely to better encourage long-term academic success. 2

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The following are just some of the awards our products have earned:

  • Family Choice Award
  • Mom's Choice Award
  • Parents' Choice Award
  • Baby Magazine Award
  • Dr. Toy Top Toy Award
  • Creative Child Magazine Preferred Choice Award
  • Parenting Magazine Toy of the Year
  • Scholastic Parent & Child Teachers' Picks Award
  • Learning Magazine Teachers Choice Award
  • Oppenheim Toy Award
  • National Parenting Center Seal of Approval
  • iParenting Media Award
  • Autism Live Top Toy Award

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Special Needs Community

The multi-sensory, layered learning approach incorporated into our products has proved beneficial to children and adults with special needs and learning challenges. For decades, physical, occupational, behavioral, and speech therapists have recommended Discovery Toys products to their client’s families. Many of these therapists have joined the Discovery Toys family as Play Advisors, sharing and selling our products to others. We have a Special Needs Toy Guide available, with recommended products grouped by select skill categories.

Our products have proved especially attractive to therapists and families with children with Autism. The Princeton Child Institute helped us to develop a set of Autism Symbols that correspond with the specific type of learning each of our toys support. These symbols can be found in our annual catalog and in our online store to help parents select appropriate products to support early childhood development.

In the past couple of years, Autism Live has bestowed its “Top Toy Award” to a number of our toys and featured them on their online broadcast.

Contact us to learn more about our Autism and Special Needs guides.


We have continuously benefitted from the advice and support of these incredible women who work tirelessly in their respective fields to support the healthy development of all children.

Georgia Bozeday, EdD
Director of Educational Services at Rush NeuroBehavioral Center, Adjunct Instructor at Northeastern Illinois University

Maria Marinakis
Founder of 10-Minute Parenting, Author of Parenting Infants & Toddlers Without Going Nuts, Creator of Busy2Balance Breakthrough program

Jennifer Jones, PhD
CCC-SLP, BCS-S, C/NDT, Speech Language Pathologist

Our Causes

The company participates in charitable activities through our efforts at both the individual team member level and the corporate level. As a proud partner of Toys for Tots, Discovery Toys has donated over $2,500,000 worth of toys to the program to date.

Our growing annual DT Easter Basket Program has brightened the lives of many children in need across North America. Play Advisors identify local organizations (shelters, hospitals, etc.) who can benefit and recruit sponsors to contribute funds and items to help fill hand-wrapped gift baskets. Over 4,000 baskets were distributed this past Easter through the efforts of team members across North America. Through these efforts, families in need across the continent are able to benefit from rich learning through play with the help of our products.

Discovery Toys also hosts the North American Preschool Educator of the Year award program, honoring the underappreciated professionals who serve a critical role in helping young children build a solid foundation for early childhood development and learning success – Preschool Educators. Nominations are open to any full-time teacher or organized group of teachers. The top 5 winners receive a cash prize, free toys, and a mention in our press release.

Contact us for more information about our North American Preschool Educator of the Year award or our DT Easter Basket program.