Category: Play with

Have a little spare time or just hanging out? Flip through a book, magazine, or website with your child and take turns making up names for the people in pictures. Or use the people riding with you on the bus or in the park. Start naming people with A, then B. See how far you… Continue reading Name people

Invent a super silly handshake for you and your child. Take turns adding a step (like shaking twice). Repeat it until you both have it down. Now change one of the steps. How do they respond? Go back and forth between the new and old way.

Pick a letter with your child and try to find it everywhere you go. Take turns calling it out when you see it. If they see an apple for the letter A, then you have to find something next. See how many things you can find. Four? Ten? More?

As you sit with your child, hold their feet and touch each of their toes, making up a story about each one. The small one is a little piglet that goes “oink oink!” The next one is his big brother, etc. Keep going and respond to what they do and say!

Create fun and simple bath routines with your child. For example, every time you feel the temperature you can say, “Splish, splash!” When the bath is over, shake the washcloth saying, “Shake, shake.” Look for ways to add to the bath routine.

Tell your child their food is an airplane and make the food fly around until they open wide so you can land it in their mouth. Make plane noises and talk about whether it is flying high, low, or in circles.

Hand your child safe objects or toys for their right hand and for their left. Then give them a third. How do they respond? Do they try to hold it with hands that are already full? Talk to them about what they might be thinking about holding objects.

Put one of your child’s socks on one of their hands, asking “Where’s your Hand?” How do they respond? Wave their hand? Look at it? Next, put it on the other hand. Do they respond in the same way or do anything differently?

A fun outside game is “Drop the Ball.” Give your child a safe object to hold onto and drop, like a ball or a crumbled piece of paper. If you pick it up, they will drop it again. “Down it falls. Up it comes.” Keep up the game with new objects!

When your child picks up something safe, encourage them to “Shake, Bang, and Roll!” How many different ways do they explore the object? Talk to them about what they’re doing, “You shook the rattle and made a sound.”