Gift ideas for 1 year olds to 2 year olds

I’ve always found shopping for this age group the hardest. They are changing so quickly as they leave babyhood and turn into little toddlers. My kids were always so busy and inquisitive at this age. Two out of three turned into real little climbers so I gravitated towards a lot of motor skill based products to help keep life a little more sane. Here are some of the things we used (and still use) and loved that might make a good present this Christmas.

Pikler triangle:

We have had them for a couple of years now (since Freddy was a baby). In fact, we recently met and worked with Dana from Nimble Kids and are so in love with her rainbow pikler. If you are looking for the ultimate climbing toy for your little one this is it. Plus, there is such a fun range of add-ons like cubby house cloths and white boards. These are totally worth investing in because of the quality. Freddy, now 6, still uses ours when he is coming up with obstacle courses or building a fort.

Blocks are a must

There are a couple of ways you can go on this one and we have done both. We were given beautiful Wooden Blocks like these ones and the boys still use them when they are creating roads, buildings and towns on their car play mat. I haven’t intentionally set them out for Ruby yet. Wooden blocks have heaps of benefits, especially problem solving as they don’t interlock so you have to make sure they are well balanced. The boys always loved trying to see how high they could stack them. Ruby (18 months) hasn’t had a go yet, mostly because she is obsessed with these cheap and cheerful Mega Bloks she found in the cupboard. These are excellent for fine motor as little hands have to manipulate the block to get them to fit together just right. A great starter block before they move on to Duplo and Lego.

Shape sorter

Unfortunately I don’t think you can get the round Tupperware shape sorters of our childhood anymore, but we have a fabulous dump truck style one. It's great for Ruby as she has to match the shape with the hole and manipulate it to get it to fit. Problem solving, fine and gross motor skills, proprioception – this one has it all. Ruby also really loves the built in shape sorting puzzle on the side of the small Nimble Pikler as well as the dump truck.  

Puzzles for all abilities

When it comes to puzzles its important to start off easy. Matching animals, parts of houses etc create a nice, easy and achievable puzzle for younger children. As their skills grow there are so many amazing puzzles around. I really love these cog complex puzzles as there is a lot of fine motor manipulation as well as problem solving.

Something practical:

As fun as it is to just give kids toys, sometimes we need to go down the practical route. Here are two of our popular stocking stuffers – the Koala plate or towel. The reason I suggest these two is that at 4 PJ is still obsessed with both. He loves the towel for the beach, bath and after swimming because they are so absorbent, making him dry and warm again quickly (there is nothing to him, he goes purple when he is cold). The plate seems like a funny suggestion but I thought I’d pop it in as PJ gave me a lecture a few nights ago for not serving his dinner in one. He loves that the ears are separate so he can have his different foods in different areas. I’ve been using them so long (since he was 6 months old) I didn’t even realise how much he loved them.