Photo Box

A great toy for young children that you can easily make yourself is a photo album or even just a box of photos of your child's friends, family, pets and favorite things. Your child will love looking through the photos and it is a great way for them to learn names of objects and people (especially those relatives who live far away and are not always around!).
I made a photo album for my son when he was around 10 months old. The first thing he did was to rip all of the photos out of the album and destroy it entirely, but after that, I put them in a box, and he would spend 10 to 15 minute at a time just taking the photos out of the box and looking at them. As he got older he would recognize friends and work on sign language for pictures of objects and animals. And now, at 2, he still enjoys dumping the photos out and naming everyone in them.
This is an easy and relatively inexpensive project that can be added to/altered as your child grows and changes, and one that they will probably enjoy for quite a long time.