Gift Ideas for the Holidays

Finding a gift can be challenging. It is hard to find a toy that is developmentally appropriate and functional. We compiled a list of some of our favorite things in hopes that it will make your shopping holidays woes a little easier. Leave your favorite items in the comments below.

Babies: 

• Floor Mirror: What a motivating activity to encourage tummy time.
• Kane Miller fold-out book: This high contrast tummy time book is guaranteed to engage and encourage visual development.
• Shape sorter: Toddlers can drop a dozen-plus vibrant shapes through the holes, open the lid, and start all over again. An early-learning powerhouse that encourages color and shape recognition, manual dexterity, and more!
• Textured balls: Your baby is fascinated with her hands at this age and these balls are the perfect accessory for exploration.  They’re colorful, easy to grab, and will stimulate her sensory system as she plays!
• Tunnel: This encourage gross motor movement through crawling. Play fun games that work on object permanence such as peek-a-boo and “Where did mommy / daddy go?”
• Oball, rings, rattles: The Oball is a flexible ball has 28 finger holes making it incredibly easy for baby to grasp. Clear rattles with colorful beads make fun sounds as baby shakes it, chases it, or drops it from their highchair for an awesome game of cause and effect. Rings and rattles also encourage grasp and upper body movement through shaking and mouthing.
• Tobbles: This toy might be the first STEM experience for baby! It provides sensory exploration, fine motor skills, coordination, and visual spatial acuity as baby stacks, topples, spins, balances, wobbles, tilts, wiggles, and rolls the colorful pieces.

1-2 year old:

• Parachute: Encourage cooperative play, strengthening and more with this gift that is good for any age!
  Tumble mat: Every child needs a mat to learn how to conquer a somersault or cartwheel, to practice jumping from color to color, or to prop up like a tent and hide under. Such a versatile toy that can be used just about anywhere!
• Streamer ring or wand with ribbon: Streamers are great fun for movement activities and dance! A quick run-through of these activities for kids using streamers will target tons of developmental skills including: coordination, motor control, spatial awareness, and direction-following.
• Instruments: Everything children need to form a marching band, launch a solo career, or just enjoy exploring music and sound is right in this box. Through hands-on play your children become familiar with basic musical concepts like rhythm, melody, and dynamics and practice developmental skills like bilateral coordination and crossing midline!  Win, win!

2-3 year old:

• Bean bags: Toss them up, throw them to a target, walk with them on your head, pass them between friends, jump over them, or use them as a base in a game of baseball.  Beanbags are so versatile that I am positive your kids will come up with their own way to play in a heartbeat!
• Y-Bike Evolve or tricycle: Designed for children between the ages of 2 and 5 the Evolve focuses on the early developmental skills for easy transition to a normal pedal bicycle. Don’t forget a sweet helmet to go along with it!
• Play Kitchen: What a fun way to build imaginative and communication as well as fine motor skills! This is a great item for both boys and girls.
• Elefun Game: Kids get a balance, body awareness and motor planning challenge with this game of fluttery butterfly chase.
• Tool Kit: The sturdy wooden construction of this tool kit promotes hand-eye coordination, counting, sorting, color recognition, and problem-solving skills. Not to mention, the pretend play options are limitless!
• Finger or hand Puppets: Finger isolation is an important fine motor skill that is often difficult to get.  These finger puppets are the perfect way to practice.

3-4 year olds:

• Scooter: If you’re on the market for a well-made, durable, and versatile toy for kids, look no further than a square scooter. Nothing can get a kid more excited about therapy than whizzing down the hallway on one of these babies!
• Stepping Stones: This simple toy is perfect for tackling all kinds of developmental skills – teaching balance and coordination while providing sensory feedback in the form of proprioceptive stimulation. Give a child and watch their imagination run wild as they play!
• Velcro Cutting Food: These are foods held together with Velcro making it easy to “cut” through and serve.  Kids love the pretend play this inspires. It also works on bilateral coordination and grip practice!
• Tweezer Game: This helps your child develop fine motor skills and learn to use their fingers by squeezing the tweezers to pick up small toys.
• Take It Easel:  With a whiteboard on one side and a blackboard on the other, your child will get to choose his surface for writing on a whim!  Bonus: vertical surfaces are a great way to work on a whole host of developmental skills!

Elementary age:

• Zoom Ball: Kid’s like the football style and acceleration of this game.  It’s the perfect prop for encouraging tons of developmental skills like balance, bilateral coordination, hand-eye coordination, and strength.
• Boom Whackers: Your child will be amazed as he holds one or two of the percussion tubes and whacks them against his arm, thigh, or any hard surface to produce sound.
• Wooden Pattern Blocks & Boards: This activity challenges children to use cognitive and problem-solving strategies to complete different patterns. Choose one of 10 simply designed, colorful pattern boards. Then, find the pieces that have the right shape and color to replicate the pattern. All-wood pattern blocks are great for developing refined fine motor control, eye-hand coordination, as well as spatial relationship, visual discrimination, color, shape and matching skills.
• Perplexus: The only way to play this challenging puzzle game is with two hands! Inside of the sphere your child will discover 22 feet worth of track containing 100 challenging barriers. Watch as they flip, twist & to the finish line! Perplexus is easy-to-use, but hard to master!
• Gym/ climbing structure with rings, swing, or monkey bars: This is a great way to work all gross motor skills as well as endurance. Safety is always a concern with climbing equipment.
• Wooden Shape Sorting Learning Clock: Our kiddos are such visual learners and we want to play to their strengths. Teaching clock and shape skills provides an engaging way to challenge children’s problem-solving skills. It can be used to help develop manual dexterity, as well as recall and retention skills, by having your child sort the 12 differently shaped and numbered pieces. Movable hour and minute hands, along with the easy-to-read numerals, help kids learn!

Middle and High School:

• Cookbook: Experiences are so critical and functional for hands on learning. Finding the ingredients, mixing items together, and create a place setting for a table. Cookbooks are great as they build many skills such as cognition, upper body strength (to mix foods or lift bowls), social, and planning skills.
• Dycast car Model: Removable parts that detach and put together helps these kiddos problem solve, build visual motor skills, and eye-hand coordination. Best of all, the cars give them the real feel of tackling a project with a parent!
• Arts and crafts: We are never too old for arts and crafts. Note your child’s strengths and build off those through a variety of ideas such as painting, bird house kit, building picture frames, making clay pots, etc. The sky is the limit. These activities are a fun way to build hand and upper body strength, hand-eye coordination, and cognitive skills such as sequencing and planning.
• Board Games: These are a fun way to build social and cognitive skills. There are so many out there available but here are a few of our favorites: Zingo, Twister, Uno, Jenga, Guess Who, What’s GNU, S’Match, Topple, Rush Hour, and BopIT.