31 Gifts and Toys for 3-Year-Old Girls

Does she hover nearby whenever a baby is being fed?

La Newborn from JC Toys gives her one to look after: a 14-inch doll made to look like a real newborn, with layette pieces for changing outfits and getting ready for bed.

Familiar faces from Bluey hide under every piece of this Ravensburger memory game, and each round plays like hide-and-seek on the floor.

Knowing the characters by heart gives her a head start, so the grown-up across from her has to pay attention.

Hape's toy guitar puts strings under the fingers of a three-year-old who belts out every tune she hears on the radio.

Labeled for ages three and up, it gives her humming and clapping a sound she makes with her own hands. The instrument sits ready on her shelf between the concerts she stages for her stuffed animals.

Those self-checkout screens she always wants to tap at the grocery store now have a play version from VTech.

She rings up pantry cans one at a time, then switches sides and pays for them herself, so the game works even when no one else is free to shop.

Expect to build the first tower yourself so she can knock it down.

Before long she is stacking her own, pressing the MEGA BLOKS First Builders pieces together and pulling them apart again, and at cleanup time the whole set goes back into its bag.

A log cabin set makes sense for a girl who already piles cushions and boxes into houses for her toys.

Here the walls rise under her hands, and the finished home stays standing for her plush friends to move into. On the living room rug, a grown-up can sit beside her and pass her the next log.

Should the three-year-old you have in mind stop to pick every flower along the sidewalk, this set lets her make her own.

Real blooms droop within hours, while these pull apart and join again whenever she wants a fresh arrangement. Every piece in the set waits to become part of whatever garden she invents next.

If the girl on your list bandages every stuffed animal she owns, here is a puppy patient to examine, brush and fuss over.

Caring for animals is her favorite game, and here she plays the grown-up in charge of the clinic. The freshly groomed pup rests on a sofa cushion until its next appointment.

Gabby and her friends stop being characters she watches and become a cast she directs.

She knows every face from the show, so she picks who talks, who gets into trouble and how each new episode ends. A rainbow Gabby comes in the set, ready to star in the first story she invents.

Tip the tube over and 60 mini safari animals spill out, each one waiting for her to call out its name.

They are minis, not big figures, so a whole herd fits on one tray for sorting by size, by color or by favorites. A cardboard box lid makes a fine savanna for the afternoon.

This plush dog gives a little girl who pets every puppy on the sidewalk a companion of her own.

She already chats with the neighbors' pets, and now she can name a pup and serve it pretend kibble. Before her nap, she can save it a spot on the pillow beside her.

Color sorting is the point of this Learning Resources farmer's market set, with every play fruit and vegetable belonging to a matching pile.

Dump them all into one big heap and she can find a home for each piece, then mix them up again for another round.

Spike the hedgehog from Learning Resources runs on one simple loop of pulling a piece out, pressing it back in and starting over, the same urge behind every straw she pokes into a cup.

Now and then she may hand you a piece and point to where it goes.

A store game needs a customer, so count on being the one with the empty basket.

The Hape checkout register puts her behind the counter, ringing up a banana and, once in a while, one of your shoes before calling the next shopper over.

Percy talks and moves under his own battery power, the big difference from a plain push engine.

A Thomas & Friends fan can switch him on, hear his sounds and phrases and watch him go. Before choosing, know that this is the British English version, so his voice has a British accent.

Each strum on this ukulele turns a preschooler's nonstop singing into a song with her own backing music.

She drums on tables and dances to any tune, so plucking along puts her inside the music, not just listening.

This unicorn camera puts picture-taking in the hands of a preschooler who stops to point at everything she spots.

She has strong opinions about what matters, and now she decides what goes in each frame herself. At the backyard sandbox, she can line up her shovel, bucket and a beetle for a portrait.

At the petting zoo, a preschooler picks which goat to frame and watches her shot slide out in her hand.

She loves copying grown-ups who stop to snap a picture, and this time the result is hers to carry around. Her goat portrait rides home in her pocket as the trip's souvenir.

Crayola Twistables crayons fit a preschooler who scribbles on every page she can reach, from coloring books to grocery lists.

Picking the color of every sky and cat is her big decision now, and these put it in her hand. The set travels in her backpack to the diner, where the paper menu becomes her canvas.

Soft Play-Doh is what a three-year-old wants under her palms, patting out pancakes and poking holes with a fingertip.

Her hands go for anything soft, and peeking behind cushions for hidden containers adds a hunt before the squeezing starts.

Several surfaces on a single stand let a preschooler move from scribbles to the magnetic board as her ideas change.

Preschoolers rarely stay seated for long, and standing up lets her scribble big, step back and pick the next color.

Whoever is choosing for a preschooler who asks for PAW Patrol every morning can hand her the show on paper.

The characters she watches become pictures she colors in herself, with stickers placed wherever she decides.