Children learn a lot about their own skills and abilities, the world around them and how things work by playing. By choosing age appropriate toys for your child, you can help boost their learning and development and give them a great start in life. Here are some ideas for toys that would be suitable for one year old children and the learning benefits they could provide.
Baby Walkers
One year old children are busy crawling or toddling and will soon fully master the art of walking. To help them improve their balance and coordination, toys such as baby walkers are really helpful. They come in all shapes and designs, with many featuring animals, and often made of wood.
Even if they’re not quite at the stage of walking, a baby walker is ideal for helping them learn to stand up. When they’re first walking, having something to prop themselves up onto is really beneficial and helps them move around with more ease.
Interactive Books
Children of all ages can enjoy books and one year olds should be at the stage of learning how to turn the pages. There are lots of big, chunky and colourful books for this age group and they’ll particularly enjoy anything that’s interactive. Look out for books that have things to feel, like different textures, tabs to pull, sounds that are made or other fun elements, like built-in hand puppets.
Getting interested in books now is a good step for future book interest, plus it’s a great way for parents to bond with their children through reading and sharing stories together.
Building Blocks
There are lots of sets of chunky building blocks available and one year olds usually enjoy stacking them up to make towers. Most of all, they love knocking them down again! Building blocks are good for helping fine tune a child’s co-ordination skills and, depending on the size of the blocks involved, they can help aid motor skills too.
Hand Puppets
Soft toy hand puppets are likely to be enjoyed by this age group. Adults can wear the puppets on their hands and act out the characters, or they can be used alongside books. Children will enjoy it when you get into the spirit of it, using funny voices to for additional play and fun.
Stacking Toys
There are lots of wooden and solid plastic stacking toys available, such as ones where you stack a series of different sized cups together or hoops onto a central pole. These types of toys are ideal for children in the one year age group to learn about different sizes and colours – many are colour coded too – and for gaining interest in patterns and shape recognition. They’re fun for children to play, but also serve an educational purpose too and help with early learning skills.
Musical And Talking Toys
Although not yet able to talk, one year olds will be busy picking up the basics of speech and will be busy making lots of noises – which form their first attempts at talking.
There are lots of battery operated and technological toys which can encourage their learning of speech (e.g. penguins that ‘talk’ to them when pressed) and these can be good for their early learning experience. Likewise, children of this age usually respond will to music, so any toys that play music or songs to children, such as nursery rhymes or simple rhythms, are worth investing in.
There are lots of battery operated and technological toys which can encourage their learning of speech (e.g. penguins that ‘talk’ to them when pressed) and these can be good for their early learning .
songs to children, such as nursery rhymes or simple rhythms, are worth investing in.