The 40 Best Toys for 1-Year-Olds (Parent & Toddler Tested)

Giant knob puzzles are right in the zone of proximal development for a 1-year-old, which means they’re not too easy and they’re not too hard. This five-piece puzzle is the form of something familiar, a home, and it exposes kids to five colors and five basic shapes.

Once babies begin crawling, a crawl tunnel is excellent for their gross motor skill development. Plus: Crawling through a tunnel is just plain fun! Add some balls, toys, or books to encourage them to go in and explore.

Many parents can’t wait to play that first game of catch with their baby. You won’t have to wait long with this fabric ball, which is safe for kids 6 months and older. It's easy to grasp for toddlers who are still working on their grip.

Shape sorters are a classic for 1-year-olds, and this adorable sushi-themed shape sorting set is one of our favorites. Learning to match a round piece to a circle, a square peg to its square hole and so on helps develop problem-solving skills.

Toddlers this age love to fill a basket up and then, you guessed it, dump it back out. Some of the seven toys in this pretend-food set have "peels" that they can play with, which has the added benefit of helping develop fine motor skills. And who knows, maybe these will get them interested in eating more real fruits and veggies.

Our kids loved a nesting and stacking toy when they they were toddlers. They loved building the pieces up and knocking them down, and figuring out which piece could fit inside another. This set is particularly delightful because the top of each is a squishy dome (or dimple) that's fun to press for a popping sound. Grooves on each dimple provide a fun sensory experience, too. In other words: This doesn't look like much, but your toddler is going to get a lot of out it!

My kids loved these nesting and stacking cubes when they they were toddlers. They loved building them up and knocking them down, and then figuring out how to put next them all back together neatly. Bonus for the numbers and cute illustrations on the side! —Cambria

This super cute frog pull-along is just the right size for one-year-olds. They can push it along the floor as they're learning to crawl and then let it trail behind them when they're walking. —Cambria

Shape sorters are a must for one-year-olds. They can help develop problem-solving skills and very early math skills. This beautifully designed wooden shape sorter cube set is a can't-go-wrong classic. —Cambria

Kids 18 months and up can enjoy this LEGO DUPLO set. Featuring Winnie the Pooh and his friends at a birthday party, little ones can build, match, and sort until they're old enough for the big LEGO sets.

Our kids spent a lot of time with this beautiful interactive book when they were really little. The pages are made of die-cuts with raised, shaped elements that teach letters, numbers, shapes, and colors in a tactile way. Really, really lovely and helpful.

Wee Baby Stella is an excellent first doll. She’s soft, cuddly, safe for 1-year-olds, machine washable, and can give little kids an opportunity to practice empathy, soothing, and nurturing in general.

The InnyBin is the ultimate toy to hone fine motor skill development. A 1-year-old will work hard putting the textured toys in and pulling them out of the bin, building their sense of exploration, discovery and accomplishment.

A musican mom tipped us off to this hippo-shaped keyboard, her go-to gift for babies turning 1. It's a toy piano, but with eight dancing, colorful birds that add another layer of delight. The piano can play 15 fun songs, 6 nursery rhymes and 26 sound effects. Rare and nice: Batteries are included.

Bath toys take an already fun experience and make it even more fun! This set includes 13 pipes and gears to create different paths for the water to run, which is highly delightful for little kids.

Even if your toddler isn't watching Ms. Rachel at 18 months, they'll have fun stacking and knocking down these wooden learning blocks. The sides show letters, numbers, animals with their names and more, giving you and your 1-year-old plenty to talk about. The set also comes with cards you can use to challenge your tot to find the letter A, or to show 5 as both a numeral and a quantity of dots — there's a lot of educational value baked in.

Unlike wooden toddler xylophones and glockenspiels, which rapidly lose their pitch, Hohner's metal bars have (and keep!) their tuning, a fact we can attest to. The included safety mallet makes it easy for a 1-year-old to start bouncing their way around the instrument.

Suitable for kids of all ages, Grimm's rainbow-colored wooden nesting bowls are the OG of open-ended tot toys. The bowls can be used for so many kinds of play at every age, and they're sturdy enough to be put into use as early as 12 months. Cambria bought these bowls when her oldest was a toddler, and they saw years of play between her two kids. She says: "I'm pretty sure one of the bowls is a swimming pool in the doll house right now."

Reading to a 1-year-old will keep getting more satisfying as the year goes along. They'll begin to study the images more closely and perhaps repeat the words, ask questions, and request more. It's because of that last fact that you'll want to grow the nursery library. This boxed set of four board books is centered around kindness and happiness plus letters and numbers, and it also makes a great gift if there's another 1-year-old in your life.

Beautiful gift alert! This English-designed rainbow stacker is for ages 18 months and up. The rubberwood is sustainably sourced in Indonesia and the pieces are hand-painted with non-toxic paint. But beyond being safe for kids and pretty for display in the nursery, the blocks are fun to fit together and to integrate into other block sets.

This silly, playful toy is a star in the pretend-play world. Kids who want to vaccum like their parents love it, and kids who are afraid of the real vaccum can use this toy vacuum to gain a sense of control. It works a toddler's gross motor skills as they push it along while the buttons and dials work fine motor skills. It lights up and has songs and phrases about numbers, letters, opposites and more.

In this tea party set, you’ll get a teapot, a serving tray, three tea cups, and three dessert pieces. The cups and desserts nest into the tray as triangles, squares, or circles. Tea sets have long life spans; my four-year-old still plays with the set we got her when she turned one. — Alicia

Jellycat's reputation for having the cutest, coziest stuffed animals around is well-deserved — they are truly the best. The one year mark is when little kids start becoming really attached to stuffies, so this is a great age to give them one they can love for years and years.

A slide is one of the best toys to give a one-year-old! Every little kid loves a slide, and this option is both sturdy and small-space friendly; when they're done playing, just collapse it and tuck it behind a bookshelf or under the bed. —Alicia

These toys are excellent for entertaining one-year-olds any time they are confined to one space. Take them on an airplane, to a restaurant, or on a long road trip. They’re also safe to chew on during teething.

One-year-olds will practice hand-eye coordination as they place the discs on the corkscrew. There are various ways to order and sort the discs, and the best part is watching them twirl down the corkscrew after kids correctly place them at the top.

Pull-and-go cars are very easy for one-year-olds to operate, providing them with a frustration-free, fun toy. The tops of the cars are designed to look like animals with mouths that actually open, adding an extra element of fun.

A toddler is eager to get from here to there. If you have the room for them to roll, this tiny bee on wheels is a fun first ride-on toy made for ages 18 months and up, and it's safe for indoors.

Going back to pretend play: A 1-year-old often loves to imagine driving, like the grown-ups. We've seen 1-year-olds go wild, turning this toy wheel on a dashboard and honking the horn. Yeah, it's a battery-operated toy, but you'll forgive it when you see how thrilled a kid can get. It plays more than 60 songs and phrases, introduces concepts such as up and down, red meaning stop, and green meaning go, and much more.

Even if the 1-year-old in your life isn't into Bluey yet, they can still enjoy this play set. Featuring plush Bluey and Bingo, plus a squeaker Chattermax and crinkly Floppy bunny, it's great for sensory play and more. Plus, it features the Heelers' car as a convenient carrying case.

This activity walker was recommended by every parent I knew when my kids were little. You can switch it to music or story mode, and there are tons of buttons and lights to press, so kids can learn colors, numbers, and more. Best of all, little ones who can't walk yet can push it around until they can walk.

Toys like this Radio Flyer wagon help 1-year-olds hone gross motor skills like walking and pushing or pulling. And they can use it for years, loading it up with toys, using it to store stuffed animals, or pretending it’s a car as they begin to dabble in imaginative play.

If you're curious about each new milestone your toddler hits, you’ll love a LovEvery play kit. Buy just one — like this one for months 22, 23 and 24 — or sign up for a subscription to get a new one every three months. A box is full of Montessori-inspired toys designed to meet your child at their current developmental level. Every kit has a play guide for parents, plus a book for the kid.

You often see this kind of large activity cube or busy box in a preschool or a pediatrician office, and you can guess why: It keeps a toddler engaged. Every side plus the top has pieces to manipulate. There are doors to open, knobs to turn, beads to move along the bead maze — it's a busy 1-year-old's dream and safe for 12 months and up, so it makes a great 1st-birthday present.

The Little People farm playset is a classic that never goes out of style. One-year-olds have fun maneuvering the animals around the farm and trying to make animal sounds while also playing with the toy's interactive elements. It has three play modes that you can move through as your child learns and grows.

This engaging activity center is a fun play space for the newly walking. If your 1-year-old is still crawling, you can place it on the floor without the legs, too. The play station includes gears, color circuits, lights, sounds and more.

One of us (Cambria!) cruised the neighborhood in style with this push car for years until her daughter grew out of it. It has cup holders for kids and parents, a functioning horn, and storage space under the hood. It's for kids ages 18 months to 4 years.

This only came out recently and ended up being a huge hit at the holidays. There's almost nothing funnier than seeing your 1-year-old working a DJ table and spinning tunes. Developmentally, it engages your tot with music and teaches cause and effect. Physically, the music gets them bopping up and down to the beat. Parentally, it's almost impossible to not take videos of your toddler getting their groove on! Place it on the legs if your toddler wants to stand, or directly on the floor if they prefer that.

This wooden shopping cart is another one of those versatile, all-around, open-ended toys that can be so many things at once. It's a shopping cart, but also a dolly stroller, a push toy, and a toddler walker. —Cambria

Before you freak out that I'm recommending a marble run for a one-year-old, know that these "marbles" are the size of plums, so we're all good there. Your toddler can watch them roll and drop, over and over again, all day long! —Cambria