If you’re after ideas for your Baby’s first Christmas presents, we’ve got 5 recommendations for you!
Use your baby’s first Christmas to start your collection of high quality open ended toys that will last thoughout their childhood. The benefit of Open Ended Play is that toys don’t have just one “way to play”. Little babies will enjoy looking at them or banging them together, then you can use them to start learning colours or counting. Eventually as your child grows they’ll start building their fine motor skills and using their imagination on more elaborate creations.
Especially if your bub is the first grandchild they’ll have lots of people asking what they can get them. We’ve always asked family members to combine their budget for presents (especially when bub would be happy opening a wooden spoon on Christmas Day) to start building our collections. This Christmas we’ve asked grandparents to combine their budget for the two kids to get a big set of magnet tiles - which we will stealthly split and wrap into two gifts so noone misses out.
Our best recommendations:
1 - Obviously we’re going to recommend our Folding Learning Tower. Usable from when confidently standing (usually 15-18 months), but prior to that it’s still handy to have in the house espeically as it folds away out of the way when not in use.
Smaller kids will enjoy just being in the vicinity of mum and dad when cooking and as they get bigger will love to get more involved. This helps limit the witching hour meltdowns and promote a healthy relationship with food as they start exploring cooking from an early age.
2 - Develop their Gross Motor Skills and prepare you Playroom for the cold winter months with Zippi Play. If you are short on space the Folding Pikler Triangle (you know how we love things that fold) Stepping Stones and Balance Beams are great for being able to spread out, play and then pack away. The Rocking Arch is a game changer if you're looking for something that kids can rock in, climb over and hide under. The items have large weight ratings so will be enjoyed for many years to come!
3- High quality wooden blocks, we have Grimms because that was all the rage when our eldest was little but if you’re looking to support Aussie small businesses you can’t go past U.Me Play. Their grippy wooden blocks make a perfect foundation for any number of games, colour learning or even using to learn about fractions as kids get into primary school.
U.Me play have a fantastic variety of Open Ended Play toys, our faves are the 100 Block Pyramid, Rainbow Rings & Coins, and Rainbow Semi Circles. Together they make for great building, threading, posting, counting and colour sorting activities.
4 - Magnetic tiles, we have the Connetix branded tiles but there are plenty of brands out there. STEAM Studio (I’m told go for the premium, not the standard) and Connetix are probably the most popular.
If you’re planning to build out a set of Connetix tiles keep your eyes out for sales because they’re rare! Connetix are known for limiting what retailers can discount outside of their one a year sale.
My only word of warning with these is to make sure you invest in a high quality brand that is not likely to break and leave the magnets exposed. And you’ll want to take out the balls from any ball run kids until your kids can be trusted to no longer put them in their mouths.
5 - Duplo, large enough to be used by little little kids they’re also able to be used long into their childhood as they are compatible with both magnetic tiles such as Connetix (wild, look it up!) and Lego, another hack I recently learnt.
We at Moppet Kids, hope you have a great Christmas with your family this year and if you have any questions about our Folding Learning Tower or accessories don't hesitate to contact us.
