Gifts for 2-Year-Olds

Toddlers love to hold their hands under running water.  They also want to mimic you washing your hands or washing things.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t have enough money to let my little one run the faucet for 2 hours while she feels it with her hands and feet.

But she needs to.  She needs to feel that running water, and fill up cups, and wash dishes, and pour things.  She needs her own sink.

My household and babies are gluten-free because of health reasons, so we don’t use play dough unless we make it ourselves.  But we always have kinetic sand available.  

Everything you can do with playdough you can do with kinetic sand.  I highly recommend picking a lane here and getting a mess of it with some tools. 

Cutting play dough and kinetic sand helps children get ready to cut veggies and use scissors.  The sensory experience of the sand/ dough helps them calm down, and the open-ended opportunities they afford to improve imagination and problem-solving.  

Beyond being gluten-free, kinetic sand can also be left out without being covered.  We have some that just live in our sensory table.  At this point, it is a year old and will likely last another year or so.  It is also easy for us to clean.

We cook every meal in our house.  EVERY MEAL.  That is 3 times a day, every day at least.  Lots of dishes and lots of prep naturally follow.

When my daughter was 18 months old, she wanted to start helping, and she has been cooking with us ever since.  She pulls the green stems off tomatoes and strawberries, helps us shred cheese and carrots, and cuts soft foods like bananas and mushrooms.  If there is something she can help prep, she does.

For the past 7 months or so, she has been using a soap cutter we already had to cut foods.  It is time for her to upgrade to something that actually looks and holds like a knife.

I thought about getting her a children’s chef’s set but decided against it.  Most of what she uses in the kitchen are real tools, and I’m concerned the kid’s set will feel more like a toy.  So I’m getting her a small crinkle knife.  The crinkled edge makes it less likely she will hurt herself and it is only designed to cut fruit and veggies.  

I’m also getting her a melon baller because that seemed fun.  She probably won’t use it until summer, but it is still a fun gift.  

I subscribe to the Montessori/ Waldorf philosophy that everything she has should be as real as possible and spark the imagination.  Scarves do that more than specific dress up items.  They can be dresses, capes, picnic blankets, baby doll swaddles, parachutes, and much more.

You could buy the “play scarves” they sell on Amazon, get a bunch of scarves from your local charity shop, or use old scarves you no longer use.  Just try to get a variety of colors and sizes, and your dress-up box is good to go!

You probably have some wooden blocks laying around, but do you have duplos?  It is time to expand your building sets to include something more elaborate.

You could go with something from Grimms, get some Tegu blocks, Duplos, or a wooden train set.  I would not get magnatiles just yet, but if you think your little one is ready for them, go for it!

Building sets are one of the best ways to improve problem solving and imagination.  I always have a few building sets available.

Children of this age are beginning to engage in imaginative play.  They are copying what we do in real life and are trying to process those actions through play.  To succeed they need a cast of characters.

Depending on your philosophy, you could get them everything from meeples to stuffed animals.  Whatever you provide them, make a point to provide at least one realistic looking baby doll.  

My daughter is firmly in a pouring phase.  She also loves rocks.  Guess what she is getting for Christmas?  

Yep!  A bag of rocks!  

You know your kiddo.  Maybe they like soft things, or they could be going through a water phase.  Whatever they’re pouring phase is, feed it. 

Over the course of the next year, your toddler is going to be ready to learn how to undo latches and fasteners of all kinds.  A buckle board, dressing boards, and plushies with fasteners are all great gifts.

You don’t have to get everything, but I would aim for having most types of fasteners, closures, and hardware types available.  

If you can’t afford a pre-made one, these are easy to make after a trip to Michaels or your local hardware store.

We found the baby shark bus when my daughter was about a year old.  She had discovered buttons, and we wanted to give her a constructive way to push buttons that would not involve constantly turning on the Xbox. 

She has loved pushing the buttons, but she is only just now ready for the content the baby shark bus provides.  She loves interacting with it while learning her letters and phonics.  Yes, this thing is so fascinating that she is working on the beginnings of phonics at 2.  She will work with it for 20-40 minutes at a time.  Marvelous!

We got an indoor therapy swing for her birthday.  She has a sensory processing disorder so the swing was a real lifesaver for us.  We swing 5-10 times a day.

If there wasn’t a pandemic on, I probably wouldn’t bother recommending this, but I imagine a lot of you are having a hard time fulfilling your kiddo’s sensory needs.  If your little one needs to spend every waking moment outside, and they seem to devolve into tantrums for no discernable reason, this will seriously help.

Big chunky beads are great for little fingers learning to string things.  You can also pour beads, and they are great for sorting by color.

If your toddler isn’t quite ready for making a string of beads, try switching out the string for a skewer or a pipe cleaner.

I mean bubbles!  

Stock up.  Bubble fluid, bubble wands, and maybe even a bubble machine.  Oooh and bubble bath!  

Kids love to feel like they are contributing members of the family.  As a result, they love to help clean.  If you are sweeping, they want to sweep.  Wiping down the table?  They want to do it too.

Many adult cleaning tools are too big and unwieldy for a tiny 30 lb toddler.  So get some tools their size.  Try to find tools that look like smaller versions of yours, and prioritize getting smaller analogs of things you use frequently.  

In our house, we have a broom and dustpan, a small mop, and some sponges just for her.  She uses them almost daily.

There are thousands of puzzles you could get.  Look for puzzles that can provide characters for the kids to play with (Like this Melissa and Doug Chunky animal puzzle) or puzzles that can help teach new words or concepts.

2-year-olds are ready to expand past the chunky puzzles but are not yet ready to delve into jigsaw puzzles.  At this point, you can go as complicated or as simple as you want.  It is a good idea to get puzzles at different levels so they can improve over the course of the year.

Also, consider getting a fishing puzzle.  Using a tool to get puzzle pieces out of the puzzle is a great problem-solving activity.

If they haven’t entered the matching phase, they will soon. So it is worth getting some toys and cards to match. 

There are matching eggs and matching games, but if you are short on cash you can always print out and laminate some 3-part cards.  3-part cards are great for learning vocabulary, and you can find a million different sets for free.  Use them to match and then play memory. 

You can also find and make free busy books that involve matching.  You will need some string, velcro, and page protectors if this is the direction you want to go.