Are you looking for some fun educational games for a 1-year-old? Then you’re in the right place! In this post, I’m sharing 15 educational games and fun activities that will support your 1-year-old’s development. These activities and games are simple, yet fun and engaging for your baby and will help encourage gross motor skills, fine motor skills, social/emotional development, language development, and cognitive development for your 12-24-month-old child.
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For more details and to see these activities in action, check out this video!
GROSS MOTOR SKILLS
So first we’re going to explore some games and activities that will help develop your one-year-old’s gross motor skills. Gross motor skills refer to the movement and strengthening of larger muscle groups of the body.
Around the time your baby reaches a year old, he or she will probably be standing often while holding on to objects, “cruising” which is holding on to furniture while walking, or even standing or walking without assistance. So from the time your baby is 1-2 years old, you will see them go from a beginning walker to a RUNNER.
1. OBSTACLE COURSE
One fun activity you can do to encourage your baby’s gross motor development is creating an obstacle course. You can do this using couch cushions, pillows, tunnels, etc.- we just used some pillows and tunnels but if you don’t have or don’t want to buy tunnels like this you can use a large cardboard box.
I love this activity because it’s great for walkers OR crawlers if your baby isn’t walking just yet and gets them working those larger muscle groups.
2. BALL PIT
The next gross motor activity is a homemade ball pit. So you can simply use a pack and play or even a plastic baby pool and just grab some balls from Amazon and let your toddler go nuts!
They can crawl or jump while they play with the balls. My son also loved kicking his legs to move the balls around the ball pit.
3. FORT
Another fun gross motor activity is making a fort! This can simply be done with furniture and blankets. Your little one will have so much fun crawling around inside.
This is also a great activity for social-emotional development as your child can engage in imaginary play- we had some stuffed animals in our son’s fort and he was hugging them and pretending to put them to sleep.
4. WALKNG
So this last gross motor activity is for little ones who aren’t walking just quite yet. But you can help encourage your little one to walk by walking with them! So first you would start out walking behind them while supporting them with two hands, then gradually as they get better with their balance you would guide them with one hand then eventually encourage them to take steps on their own.
It’s important to remember that all children develop at their own pace, so don’t worry if your child isn’t doing these things right at 1 year old. As always, if you’re concerned about something, speak to your pediatrician.
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
The next set of games and activities are going to focus on strengthening your child’s fine motor skills, which have to do with the development of smaller muscle groups in the body, particularly hands and fingers.
A big fine motor development you’ll see when your child is about a year old is the development and refinement of the pincer grasp, which is the ability to pick something up with the thumb and index finger.
Between the ages of one and two, you’ll start to see your child be able to perform fine motor activities with more accuracy and control. Some of these activities include holding a crayon and scribbling on paper, placing pegs in a pegboard, stacking blocks, turning pages of a book, feeding themselves with both hands and utensils, and pushing, pulling squeezing, and sliding objects.
5. SENSORY BIN
A fun activity to strengthen fine motor skills along with sensory exploration is by letting your child play in a sensory bin. You can fill sensory bins with TONS of different objects, but we used baby cereal as the base then placed some little toys and a spoon in there.
If your child is closer to two and is out of the phase of putting things in their mouth, then you can use sand, but my son still tends to put things in his mouth from time-to-time, so the baby cereal is a great alternative option.
Here they can practice using fine motor skills to scoop the sand, play with it in between their fingers, and manipulate small objects. Just a disclaimer to ALWAYS supervise your child very closely with ALL of these learning activities, especially the ones that involve smaller objects.
RELATED POST: 10 Easy DIY Sensory Activities for Babies
6. CAR WASH
Our next little game is called “CAR WASH”! This is another type of sensory bin activity. I just took a shallow tray, but you can use a larger, deeper bin if you want. I then filled it with some dish soap and water and threw some little toy cars in there with a fresh sponge and your child can play around in the water and “wash” the cars!
This is also a great imaginary play activity that will help with social-emotional development, which we’ll talk more about in a bit!
7. STACKING
Any kind of games that involve stacking are great for fine motor skills. This can be done using blocks, legos, pegs, or nesting cups, but these stacking activities are also great for developing hand-eye coordination along with problem-solving skills for your 1-year-old.
8. MYSTERY BOX
An entertaining game that your toddler is sure to love is a mystery box. You can just use a cardboard box and place some kind of flap over a hole cut out in the top, then place objects of various sizes and textures in the box, then have your toddler reach inside and grab them.
When they’re a little bit older this is a great activity for them to describe what they are feeling or guess the object without seeing it. My preschoolers and kindergarteners used to LOVE this activity! You can do SO many different activities and games with these mystery boxes – I absolutely love them!
9. PUTTING OBJECTS INTO CONTAINERS
So the next educational game on our list is putting objects into different containers. This can be done in so many ways, but here is an activity I did with my son in one of my fine motor activity videos.
I took a puff container and cut an opening in the lid and then had my son drop large craft sticks through the hole. You can do this with any kind of container or use multiple containers with different sized openings and set them out along with some objects that your child can place into different containers.
If you want even more activities you can do with your 1-year-old to strengthen their fine motor skills, then definitely check out my fine motor activity video series.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL ACTIVITIES
So around the age of one, you start to see your child’s personality really emerge. They start to express their emotions more and you’ll probably start to see the tantrum phase appear.
There are lots of different activities you can do to support your child’s social-emotional development, which is how they interact with others, manage their emotions, and start to understand who they are.
10. IMAGINARY PLAY
Imaginary play activities are great for supporting your toddler’s social-emotional development. There are so many benefits that come from kids engaging in imaginary play. Between the ages of one and two you will begin to notice your child imitating your actions or things you say, so they love to pretend to engage in everyday activities that they see their parents or caregivers taking part in.
Playing “kitchen” is an awesome activity because your toddler can pretend to do things that will become real-life skills, like cooking and eating.
We also have a little Melissa and Doug Vet Set that my son loves but any kind of activities that engage your child in imaginary play are fantastic for supporting your child’s social-emotional development.
There is also tons of opportunity for language development with these activities, so be sure to engage with your child and use descriptive language to talk about what they’re doing and label the objects they are playing with.
11. IMITATION
Another activity you can do to support social-emotional development is to play imitation games. So you can simply perform an action or make a sound and have your child repeat what you do. As your child gets older, you can make different faces to express emotion then have them repeat while you verbally label the emotion.
LANGUAGE ACTIVITIES
From the ages of one to two, you are going to see an explosion in your baby’s language skills. During this time, they can understand more words than they can speak. They can follow simple directions such as “come here” or “sit down” and they often point to things in order to communicate with you.
By the time your baby is a year old, they can probably say a few simple words, such as mama or dada, but by the time they reach 18 months their spoken vocabulary increases to approximately 20-50 words, and by 2 years they can start to put 2 words together to convey their thoughts.
There are so many activities you can do in your everyday life to support your baby’s language development.
12. SING SONGS
One activity you can do is to simply sing songs or recite nursery rhymes with your baby. The repetitive nature is great for developing their language skills.
13. I SPY
Reading with your child is amazing for language development. However, one game that I love is what I call “I Spy.” You simply read any book as ask your child to find and point to different objects. Your child may not be able to do this RIGHT when they’re a year old, but they will be able to very soon after as their understanding of vocabulary (also known as receptive language) increases. First word books, like this one, are great for this activity!
14. COPY CAT
The next game is called copy cat – it’s simply an imitation game that involves repeating sounds. You just make a sound or say a word and have your baby repeat it!
For more ideas on how to teach your baby to talk you can check out my video on how to encourage your child’s language development here.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES
Cognitive development is how children think, explore, and figure things out in the world around them. At around a year old, your toddler can now remember skills they have previously learned, such as rolling a ball or building with blocks.
They also begin to understand the concept of cause and effect more and can comprehend the connections between certain actions. For example, they understand that if they have an open container filled with objects, the objects will fall out when they flip the container over.
By one year, your child also understands the concept of object permanence, which is the understanding that if something is hidden out of sight, it still exists.
15. HIDE AND SEEK OR PEEK-A-BOO
Honestly, all of the above activities will help support your baby’s cognitive development, but some simple more specific games are hide and seek or peek-a-boo. Babies around the age of one year love covering themselves with a blanket and pulling it down when you ask where they are.
Hide and seek is also a great cognitive game that supports gross motor skills as well as baby crawls or walks to find you.
Be sure to grab my free checklist for your 12-24-month-old baby’s developmental milestones below!
I hope you enjoyed these activities! Leave us a comment below to let us know which activity you’re most excited to try with your child.
