Young children start learning a lot earlier than you might imagine despite what the experts are all saying. This is why it's never too early to introduce educational toys for 1 year old toddlers. The results will surprise you at how quickly they will react to simple problem solving using fantastic learning toys covered in this article.

Infants learn faster than you think

For endless centuries, the practice of child care has been passed down by parents in every corner of the world. It's no surprise that we live in different times and do not raise our children to grow up faster than they should. At some point in our history of humankind, the introduction of educational toys was introduced to improve the select skills of very young toddlers.

The first noted point in history where educational toys come from John Locke who published a book in 1693 that included the mention of playing blocks with numbers and letters on them. These were among the very first toys that were considered rational and educational since they encouraged stacking and learning about the alphabet and numbers. After this, educational toys began to emerge all thanks to a spiked interest in child learning.

Now, for the first three months of an infant’s life, they are dependent on your care at all times. Around the 4^th or 5^th month, this all starts to change. Infants can easily grab and hold objects that are given to them. And though they cannot control these items, this is why most of these items should be soft and plushy. This is typically when infant playtime will start to motivate them to take items from their hands.

As they grow older, these simple grab games can become powerful lessons for selecting items that are different from each other. Different colors, different sizes, and even varied textures are all helpful. By the time they have reached their 12 months, your toddler will be ready to be introduced to new sorting and selecting education games.

Carrots Harvest Educational Toy

This activity is perfect for toddlers that are starting to use their curiosity from everyday items that every toddler will be able to relate to. It consists of a 5x5 inch block that’s decorated with images of an inchworm, a ladybug, a bunny, and a gopher with 7 various-sized carrots in a vegetable patch. The main materials used to make this toy are made from New Zealand-made pine wood that is coated with durable water-based paints.

The carrots all come in various sizes and will only fit into holes that fit the diameter of each hole, but the length of each is all the same. What makes the carrots more attractive is the addition of tough fabric green tops that stick out of each carrot. This fabric is easy to clean and surprisingly tough, even for toddlers teething on them. What you can expect that your toddler will love with this toy is pulling them out of each hole.

And though many toddlers will need some time to learn from this toy by trial and error, it seems very obvious that any carrot can be put back into a hole when shown by a parent. This helps with developing eye and hand coordination and differences in size. Certainly, the ability to sort each of these carrots into the right hole will happen with patience and time. Later, it will be excellent to start teaching simple counting, on one hand, using carrot pieces.

Even if you aren't using this toy every day, this educational item also makes a wonderful decorative toy to place on a shelf when not being used. Since the paint is thicker on the carrots, any possible teething from a toddler won't remove any of the lively orange paint thanks to the protective BPA-free varnish coating.

Montessori Puzzle For 1-5 Years

This is an example of educational toys for 1 year old toddlers that will offer a bit more variety when it comes to shapes. There are a total of 5 different shapes including circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, and hexagon shapes. In addition to that, the colors include white, black, yellow, red, and turquoise. Each post is attached along the body of a cartoon shark that looks similar to Baby Shark’ and allows each shape to be stacked.

This is where the challenge becomes a little more complicated since each post has pegs along the length of them that match each shape. This prevents other shapes from sliding down the wrong post. And though you can't expect that your toddler will be able to figure out how to stack these on the posts, they made excellent stacking blocks and laying shapes together on the floor.

If you’re worried that your little one will be prone to teething on these flat block shapes, they are made of solid beech wood that uses non-toxic water-based paint with a thick layer of BPA-free sealer varnish. As your toddler grows, they will start to learn the different colors and shapes while they play. This can lend well to stacking each of the matching shapes onto each post. Once these are stacked onto the post the pegs will keep the shapes from slipping off.

Each shape is adult fist-sized in diameter so they don’t represent any choking danger but are think enough for little hands to pick up from the floor. The first steps in learning that 1-year-olds will start to identify are shapes and colors while stacking on the posts will start happening as they grow older. A parent can show examples of how the select shapes can create simple patterns on the floor to make animals or familiar images a toddler will identify.

There are a total of 25 separate colorful pieces that stack onto each of the 5 stacking posts. All of the posts that have pegs along them are made from BPA-free plastic that is molded in one piece, unlike other brands that have wooden posts with glued pegs. This will be an educational toy that will appeal to toddlers up to three years of age.