Balls are useful play apparatus throughout early years development. Here’s how to get the most from a ball at key stages: Six months: Great for holding, squeezing, shaking and building grip and arm strength. Balls with bells inside help with visual tracking at a time when vision is not fully developed. 12 months: Rolling and […]
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Play people are an especially important part of any pre-school toy box. In these characters children recognise themselves and their families and friends. Their play is usually about enacting real-life or imagined scenes – simple scenarios such as being at home in the kitchen or driving along in the car – compounding their understanding of
Animal figures are a perennial favourite. When children are learning to talk they are a great way to explore sounds and noises. As they get older, they can become part of small-world play and form the basis of hundreds of adventures, imagined and real. Playing with toy animals provides a structure to children’s small world
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Understanding that something, or someone, continues to exist even when it’s out of sight is one of the most important concepts a small baby can grasp. It’s why babies take such delight in games of peekaboo. They believe (so the theory goes), that when you cover your face you wink out of existence. They don’t
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Is there a better toy than the simple block? Whether you need a castle or a cave, a house or a road, reach for the blocks. Can you think of anything that delights both babies and preschoolers as much? From a baby’s earliest attempts to grasp and manipulate objects through to a school-child’s sprawling constructions,
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Wind the bobbin up? Blackbirds baked in pie? It’s tempting to question the relevance of nursery rhymes in the 21st century. But ask any primary school teacher and they’ll tell you – the child who knows their nursery rhymes is almost always among the best readers and writers in their class. Nursery rhymes are such
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Sand and water go together like coffee and chocolate. Nice on their own but great together. They are open-ended materials which means that the play possibilities are endless. There are no fixed outcomes here. It’s all about exploration and discovery and there is always something new to learn. Water play It might look like they
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“ So all we could do was to sit sit sit sit And we did not like it, not one little bit. ” The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss ‘Only boring people get bored’ – we’ve all said it, or heard other parents saying it to their children, when they complain of having nothing to
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Mark making skills develop in much the same way as language. Initially, babies and young children delight in the pure physicality of it, running their fingers through sand or scribbling with chalk on a patio, for example. Gradually they realise they can control the marks they make as their gross muscles and hands grow stronger
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For children of a certain age, wooden train sets are mesmerising. The rhythmic sound of the wheels clicking over the joins in the track, the whoosh of acceleration as the train rolls down slopes. Even the smell of the wood is calming. There’s nothing surprising about the train’s route. There can be no sudden detours,
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