I am constantly on the lookout for what my 2 1/2 year old daughter can help me with. So, with my niece’s 1st birthday approaching, I wanted to give my toddler a chance to learn how to wrap a present for her cousin. We both had lots of fun!
My daughter LOVES wrapping paper. I have heard people complain about their kids ripping the wrapping paper off their presents so fast that they don’t even notice who it was from, but my daughter is the opposite.
When she was a few months short of two years old, we had Christmas with my side of the family. She was still getting the hang of unwrapping presents and every piece of paper she tore off was a tiny scrap. She wanted to throw each piece away as soon as she tore it off. The trash can was on the other side of the room making this slower process even slower. She would get in prime present opening position, tear off an insignificant piece of paper, stand up, toddle all the way across the room, tell my dad to open the trash can for her, toddle back, and repeat.
She finally unwrapped the present after who knows how many trips back and forth for both her and my dad. What was inside was not nearly as exciting as the unwrapping had been. She has never unwrapped presents that meticulously again, but she still absolutely loves doing it.
With this love of wrapping paper in mind, I assumed wrapping a present wasn’t going to be very difficult for my daughter. Instead, I was quickly reminded how much toddlers have to learn about the world.
How to Wrap a Present With a Toddler
Supplies:
- Wrapping paper
- Tape
- A present
- Crayons (Optional)
Setup:
I started out by doing as much as I could to set my daughter up for success. You can tweak any of these setup suggestions to fit your own child’s experience level.
I precut the wrapping paper and put several strips of tape on the table for easy access. Also, you may have noticed in the picture that my niece’s present looks like it is already wrapped. Her really fun personalized name puzzle from Fat Brain Toys came like that. It turned out to be really helpful in avoiding my daughter getting jealous and wanting to play with the toy instead of wrap it. If this is your toddler’s first present wrapping experience you may also want to somehow cover the present to make the learning process easier.
Creating:
As soon as we started the actual wrapping, I realized how little my daughter knew about tape. I placed the present in the middle of the wrapping paper, showed her how to roll the paper up and then asked her to tape it to the present. Any guesses on what she did? She grabbed the edge of the paper and started tearing it. Her experience with tape was something broke and the tape put it back together. She had never seen it be used to put two unbroken things together before. I ended up putting on the first piece of tape to show her how.
Then we moved on to the three other sides that needed taped. My daughter folded the other side of the paper down like she was a wrapping pro. But then she put her tape down on only one side of the paper. It took a lot of coaching and pointing to get her to place the tape where it actually taped two pieces together. After several attempts we had the paper wrapped around the present.
Now we had to fold over both of the flaps. Both sides still took multiple attempts to get the tape in a place that was actually useful, but I think she started to understand the concept by the end of it. Since I used pretty boring wrapping paper, we then flipped the wrapped present over and my daughter colored it with crayons.
Outcome of Learning How to Wrap a Present With a Toddler:
Overall teaching a toddler how to wrap a present was a lot harder than I anticipated, but I think we both had a lot of fun. I’m sure my daughter’s developing tape skills will come in handy in future projects. This was all about taping, but peeling tape also has great benefits.
Will your toddler be helping you the next time you have a present to wrap? If your toddler loves to help you as much as mine does, get them helping in the kitchen too.
