Nursery World - Play time! (7)

Simple and adaptable activities to foster babies' and toddlers' cognitive development and emotional well-being are offered by Alice Sharp Faces

Faces

* Place photographs of faces, cut from magazines, on the floor and encourage a toddler to look at them. Include photographs with front and side views of faces. * Note the photographs that interest the toddler and describe the faces or name the people in the pictures. * Place a mirror beside the photographs and suggest that the toddler look in it. * Exclaim, 'Oh, I can see (Ben). I can see his hair, his eyes....'

Family faces

* Repeat the activity above, using photographs of the child's family. * Ask a toddler questions about the people in the photographs. * With an older child, place two photographs face down and ask if they remember who is in them. Let the child check if they are right. * Return to the mirror. Look at a photograph of the child and ask them to touch their nose on the mirror, then their actual nose, and so on. * Invite the child to make a funny face and exclaim, 'Oh, your photo can't do that!'

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