With Abel’s birthday in a month, I’ve been brainstorming first birthday gift ideas.
Since he’s our first baby, we don’t have all the toys and things already. We’ve been blessed with lots of hand me down clothes, so he doesn’t need much there. I like simple, open-ended toys that can be used for years and encourage imaginative play as well as learning skills.
I love Kmart’s wooden toys and found so many things that I want to get for Abel! We can’t buy everything because we do have a budget, but these are things that I saw and loved! I’m hoping to go shopping with Jared so we can both pick out Abel’s presents.
*Note: I’m shopping in New Zealand. I’ll be sharing links to products you can buy here. Prices are current at the time this post was written. Items might not be in stock online. Some items are recommended for ages older than 1 year.
1. Wooden Rainbow – Kmart, $10
2. Wooden Stacking Ring – Kmart, $9
3. Sensory Balls – Kmart, $7
4. Wooden Xylophone – Kmart, $6
5. Wooden Breakfast Puzzle – Kmart, $10
6. Wooden Dino Puzzle – Kmart, $5.50
7. Tactile Touch and Feel Puzzle – Kmart, $10
8. Lego Duplo Tow Truck – Warehouse, $7
9. Dump Truck Shape Sorter Vehicle – Kmart, $18
10. Wooden Beach Buggy – Kmart, $5
11. Wooden Blocks with Shape Sorting Lid – Kmart, $17
12. Wooden Clutch Character – Kmart, $3
I love the wooden kitchen toys that Kmart has too, but those are probably better for when Abel is a bit older so he won’t try to eat the play food (I hope – they do grow out of eating everything, right?).
Abel currently has lots of babyish toys so I’m excited about getting some that will challenge him more. He has lots of books too which he loves! His favorites are the touchy-feely books. He can look at his books by himself for ages, and also loves being read to.
p.s. where did my baby go? When I look at these pictures I really CAN believe he’s almost 1 because he looks so big!
I also plan to print and laminate some photos for him, like the ones in this post.
Once he’s one, I’m planning to make a photo book from his first year of life – more for me than for him, definitely, and I can’t wait!
Tilly Cutforth 
I would not be buying too many toys as yet. My granddaughter has many Kmart toys and on the whole they have been great. I would be very careful about buying musical toys. Some are so out of tune they might be detrimental to the child’s musical development.
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Ooh, good point. He got one toy for his birthday that has music! And between what we bought him and the generous gifts, I won’t need to buy him toys for ages! He definitely has plenty for now.
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Nice choice 🙂
I can’t remember what we got the kids for their first birthdays 😀
but we got lots of wooden toys as well.
some of our absolute favourites up until now, they’re 5.5 & 3.5 now, (though they didn’t get all of it for their first birthday) are: the biiiig rainbow from grimm’s, lego-duplo, a wooden play kitchen and accessoires, tons of bioblo (don’t now if they are known outside of europe, they’re colorful building blocks (onesize) from recycled materials)…those are the things that are pretty much in everyday use…
I wouldn’t get more than one or two of those touch and feel puzzles as they get bored as soon as they know how to do them, which usually doesn’t take much time 🙂
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Thanks! Sounds fun, we had a wooden play kitchen my entire childhood and it was a favourite.
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