11 Fun Activities for 1-Year-Olds

Author: Ellen Sturm Niz

These indoor activities are designed to boost your 1-year-old's growing skills.

Between his newfound ability to walk and constantly improving language skills, your 1-year-old is so much fun to spend time with—which is important, because your interactions with him are essential to her development.

"Between 12 months and two years, kids are starting to do things on their own, seeing cause and effect, and actively engaging with others in their environment, " says Robert Myers, Ph.D., a child and adolescent psychologist, founder of the Child Development Institute, and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. "Parents stimulating them, interacting with them, teaching them things, and exposing them to age-appropriate challenges and experiences is very important to encouraging development, and to the children exploring on their own and learning from interacting with their environment."

But there's no need to pull out a mountain of toys with all the bells and whistles—simple activities work well. "I can sit down with a child with one block and come up with 100 different activities because it's all about being playful and interacting with them," explains Roni Cohen Leiderman, Ph.D., dean of the Mailman Segal Center for Human Development at Nova Southeastern University, and co-author of Let's Play and Learn Together.
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Not sure where to start? We rounded up several development-promoting activities that are fun and easy.

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