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If you are going to be looking after children either your own or other people's, you will naturally need some apparatus. Your training will have taught you what you are required to have by law, items such as safety apparatus, cots, high-chairs and strollers, but you will also need some toys. Which ones though, there are so such a lot and they are not cheap either?

Well, the first thing to consider is the age range of the children that you will have under your care. I am sure that your training will have already taught you that babies have different needs from toddlers and so on up the age scale. Babies cannot get about (or not much) so they need to have their toys near at hand.

Having said that, babies are not even very good with their hands. They just seem to want to stuff things into their mouths with them, so the safest alternatives for babies are visually and aurally stimulating toys that will neither choke nor poison them. Revolving mobiles, colourful rattles, an attractive blanket, wallpaper with pictures of animals like Beatrix Potters menagerie of rabbits, foxes and ducks.

It is almost certainly better if you do not supply any toys that are going to be sucked and then passed around other children for fear of cross-infection. Let their parents provide the babies' own cuddly toys and teddy bears et cetera. You may like to advise parents not to purchase babies' toys which come apart easily or have buttons or loose eyes because of the risk of choking.

In the next age bracket, the struggling toddler, kids are beginning to become curious and are 'into everything'. They still want to put everything in their mouths though, so the same warnings apply as before, but the toys can and should be more challenging. Books with a thin storyline and big pictures are pretty useful as are fish tanks that are safely out of reach. Children love to watch a busy fish tank and it is better than TV.

Building blocks and even the babies' version of Lego can be introduced at this age although the toddlers are still a bit young for them. Toddlers will start to become attached to favourite toys and want to carry them around with them at this age, so soft balls, dolls, rattles, and educational toys suitable for the age group are good.

After about eighteen months, educational toys like blocks and Lego (or Duplo) are even more important, so are books, but children of this age like to bang things and create a noise as well. A plinky-plonky instrument like a toy xylophone or a plastic piano are good for fulfilling these needs.

After roughly two years of age, children start to play with other children and Wendy Houses and toy tea sets are useful for encouraging this. They will also like to get about and drive toy cars and tricycles. Children must be encouraged to play in a safe outdoor environment now too, if the weather is suitable. Low-level swings and slides are fun as is a sand pit, if you can stop the local cats from using it as a public lavatory.