Gift Ideas for Babies and Toddlers

    

 

We welcome you to our guide on gift ideas for your toddlers and babies, we understand that finding the perfect and practical gift for your little ones can be overwhelming. So, we have compiled a short list of ideas that includes some development toys for their growing minds, and some creative gifts that are sure to spark their imagination. The list of gift ideas has been carefully selected to suit all the different age groups and assist in the various stages of development.  Feel free to browse through the list to find the perfect gift for your little one.  

 Development Toys for Babies  

 

Infants between 0 and 4 months of age 

In the early stages of a baby’s life, they begin to prepare their motor, emotional, and sensory skills with toys that involve sounds, textures, and contrasting colours. By the time they reach 4 months, they can already bring their hands together and use their eyes to coordinate movement, so here are some toys that will help them in this development stage.

Baby Rattles

A baby rattle can be a form of amusement for your baby, but it is much more than this as it can improve their hand-eye coordination, build, or strengthen their grip, as well as stimulate their physical touch and feel senses.

Mobiles 

Many mobiles play soft soothing music that can help in calming your baby and allowing them to easily drop off to sleep, but they can also stimulate their brain function. Their eyes can follow the swaying toys helping them sharpen their 3 and 4D reasoning and giving them depth perception.

The mobile is also greatly beneficial in helping your baby develop their fine motor skills as their hands reach out to touch the dangling toys and can also help to strengthen their neck muscles by turning their heads from side to side. The noises and music it makes can help to stimulate their hearing.  

Colourful Floor Play Mats

From as early as one month you may be surprised by what your baby can learn from a play mat, as it provides them with a safe and protective environment where they can develop their motor skills, and at the same time, have loads of fun.

When not sleeping, your baby can spend time on their tummies giving them vital exercise and strengthening their legs, arms, and neck muscles, helping them to develop their visual and sensory skills, and at the same time, preventing a flat head due to the time they spend lying face up.

 

Infants between 4 and 9 months of age    

At this age, the baby begins to open their hands and purposely reach out to touch objects, and it is also the time teeth begin to appear. Everything they take hold of goes directly to the mouth, which is why you need to take care in avoiding any object that is small enough to fit into their mouths to avoid choking.

Baby Teethers 

When your baby starts to teeth, baby teethers are very helpful in relieving some of the pain caused by the tooth that is emerging from the gums, by chewing the teether and putting pressure on the sore and swollen gums.

It is important to remember to buy teethers that are made from rubber, silicone, or even wood. It is also helpful to put the teether into the refrigerator to chill it slightly, giving your baby additional help in removing the pain.

Soft Squeezy Toys 

Soft squeezy toys have numerous benefits in the devilment of your child as they learn from their surroundings using their senses, so soft toys introduce them to new textures as well as teach them all about different sizes and shapes.

As your baby is still in the development stage and discovering the world around them, they may feel a little scared, so the soft toys are there to offer them comfort when they feel afraid or uneasy.

Peek-A-Boo

Playing Peek-A-Boo can stimulate your baby's senses, help build motor skills, strengthen visual tracing, help reinforce object permanence, and encourage social development. Playing Peek-A-Boo helps you to understand that even though they cannot see your smiling face, it still exists.

Infants between 9 and 12 months of age    

Your baby is now able to sit and pull themselves up to stand independently. They may be starting to crawl, and there are a few good gift ideas for this age. However, you need to be sure that anything you choose has a stable base that can support their weight and prevent them from falling over and hurting themselves.

Sensory Balls are

Sensory balls come in different sizes and colours. They can have bumps and ridges, that when handled, encourage finger movement and develop gross motor skills. These balls are ideal for sensory development and the bright colours spark the child's imagination and also help with visual stimulation.  

Toys That the Baby Can Put In and Take Out of Containers   

This activity can promote fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, physical dexterity, logical and imaginative thinking, foster self-esteem, a sense of accomplishment, independence, and creative exploration. Here are some of the toys that fit into this category.

A wooden coin box with a slot on the top and several different coloured wooden coins that can be dropped into the box, a box with different shapes and corresponding wooden shapes that fit into those shapes on the side of the box.

Push and Pull Toys

These types of toys make your toddler smarter and stronger and require strength and balance, which means they can learn to control their movements with a lot more confidence. Here are some of the toys that fit into this category. Push toys can include things like wooden trains, and a lawnmower, or pull toys can include different types of animals attached to a string or short handle. This list of these types of toys is endless.

 

Infants between 12 and 15 months of age    

When your child reaches this age group, with the coming of their first birthday, you will notice a real change in their cognitive development. They will start to put meaningful words together, now is the time when they start exploring their environment and begin standing independently.

These toys will increase their fine motor skills, cognitive development, and hand-eye coordination, enhance their object permanence, and become a challenge for them to get the stack all the blocks correctly.   

 Stackable Blocks

Stacking blocks that can be stacked on top of each other or forming various patterns lying flat on the floor, or blocks that are different sizes that fit into each other, as well as blocks of different colours. This allows your child to identify the various colours.

Puzzles

Puzzle toys can include farm animals, fruit, fish, flowers, and much more, where the item is made of wood with a certain shape and needs to be inserted onto a wooden base with the same cutout shape.

 Cause and Effect Toys 

Cause-and-effect is very important in developing language skills and comes before they start talking, so playing with these toys helps to build their fundamental language skills. Cause-and-effect toys can include music toys, pop-up toys, toys with buttons, toys that light up when a button is pushed, and many more.

Infants between 24 months and 3+ Years of Age    

When your child reaches this age the most important thing to teach them is how to read, so books seem to be the best type of toys to buy for this age group to develop their language skill, where they can learn to name colour and make animals sounds, start to count, and carry on with simple conversations. Here are some of the toys that are recommended for toddlers of this age.

Toys to ride like tricycles, finger painting, wax crayons, blackboard and chalk, modelling clay, puzzles with three to six pieces, balls, soap bubbles, image books, beads to thread on a cord, musical instruments, puppets, outdoor games like swing and slide, or a soft cuddly friend.

 

Choosing a special gift for your baby is a perfect way to show how much you love them and are willing to support their growth. So, whether your gift is educational, or sparks their curiosity, the joy of giving a gift to your child is priceless, so make sure your choice will hold many wonderful memories that you can cherish for a lifetime. Happy gifting.        

 

 

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