Gift Ideas For One-Year Old

It’s not easy to be a one-year old child. You are neither a baby nor a child – you may have learnt to walk or at least crawl with perfection, but that is only the beginning. You have to learn to hold things, to catch a ball, to run around, to eat all kinds of stuff that mommy prepares. At this stage, a child’s life is full of challenges, new things to learn, discovery of the world, as well as discovery of the self. What a great amount of work! It is thus difficult to guess what to gift a one-year old child. One has to take into account the fact that a child should be able to learn from what he is gifted – thus, clothes are passé. If you wish to gift a child something meaningful, read on.

 

 

Beautifully illustrated books always top the list of what to gift a one-year-old child. Since they are constantly taken in by all that they see around them, they should be given books with large pictures of smiling human and animal figures. For instance, ‘That’s not my Kitten’ book is very popular with one-year old children. Such books also help develop the child’s sensory organs, by giving them something to touch and feel too.

 

The animal world is definitely more fun for a one-year-old than the human world is! Little figurines of animals of all kinds – those that can be domesticated to those only found in the zoo or in jungles – are fun to play with. In addition, as the child plays he/she can be taught the sounds that each animal makes – ‘bow wow!’ for a dog, ‘quack, quack!” for a duck and so on. Even if they do not learn immediately, sooner or later they will begin to imitate and recognize them too. For instance, if you show a one-year-old, a dog and tell her that it goes ‘bow wow!’, she will point towards a real dog and recognize it to be a ‘bow wow’ too.

 

Soft sole shoes are also good for a child who is one-year-old. In India, many children who can walk, or are learning to walk, wear shoes that squeak when they walk, making a pleasantly funny sound. This sound is often very attractive for a child, who is overwhelmed by the wondrous sights and sounds that the world has to offer him/her. The only problem that could arise would be if the child so falls in love with the sound that his/her shoes make that he/she keeps stomping about, spoiling the shoes in no time!

 

Wooden building blocks are an excellent way to help your little one, develop sensory and motor skills. Since he/she is learning to hold things, place them neatly, is developing a sense of shape, texture, colour, etc about whatever he/she can lay his/her hands on, building blocks would prove to be beneficial for her development as well. Also, since they are so many in number, they will keep him/her busy for a long time.

 

Kids do not start talking very early, especially boy children, but they do imitate grownups in whatever they do. Giving the child a toy phone is like encouraging him/her to speak his/her mind out, something that they would love to, if they really could. Give the child the phone and take the actual phone receiver or cellular phone with you. As he/she speaks baby babble, pretend to comprehend and respond; he/she will love it!