Nursery World - Visual awareness: Points of view

<P> Visual points of interest encourage children's physical skills, as long as you don't overload them, says Jennie Lindon </P>

Visual points of interest encourage children's physical skills, as long as you don't overload them, says Jennie Lindon

Babies, toddlers and very young children need an environment that is visually interesting without becoming visually overloaded. Commercial play materials for young children sometimes emphasise the 'need to stimulate' under-threes for their visual sense, as well as other aspects of their early development. But very young children do not need to be pushed along and chivvied into stimulation. If they have an interesting environment, with people and play materials that they can easily access, then under-threes will manage their own 'stimulation' perfectly well.

Babies focus at a close distance, the gap at which they are naturally held for feeding. But they soon become able visually to home in on people and on objects of interest at greater distances. When babies learn to be competent crawlers, cruisers and then walkers, they use their vision together with physical skills and toddler planning power. Watch mobile young children and see them look, move across to their point of interest, often at speed, settle to get close to the object or person (large or small) and reach out to touch and experience, using all the fine physical skills they have at that moment.

Babies and young children like to look, sometimes for quite a long time, at activities of interest. They also combine their physical skills of holding, turning, squeezing, dropping or throwing, so that they then watch the consequences of what they have just achieved. Under-threes often then repeat the same interesting action, because it is only through the direct experience of 'do it again' that they learn that identical or very similar actions usually have the same consequence.

These children need space to explore by looking and touching, and they also need the chance to use large physical movements with visual skills. Watch the delight of a mobile toddler, often in the garden, as they twirl, bend over and look through their legs and chortle to see their familiar world upside-down.

Good practice

Your knowledge of child development will tell you that the learning environment within a nursery or a family home needs to be visually of interest at the level of a very young child.

Get down on the floor and look carefully at your setting from the perspective of a baby lying on their stomach or sitting in a baby seat. Try the view from sitting or toddling. Get your eyes lined up with a young child's level.
What can you see? Is it mainly a lot of adult legs? Or do you connect visually and easily with adult faces, because the adults are sitting on the floor or on low level seating? Is it easy to make visual contact with an adult, and to check by look and gesture, 'Can I get your attention if I want it?'
Do you see a lot of shut cupboard doors, or containers of play materials that are way above your reach? Or do you see at least some open shelving, with materials that are easy to see, touch and pull out, because they are in baskets or suitable containers?
Are there low-level mirrors at your new eye level? Are there pictures and photos that you can access - either because they are in holders you can handle, or fixed in a display behind suitable Perspex for safety?
Do you see some items of interest that stay still and under-threes could fetch and explore? Are there some visually interesting displays that move - perhaps different kinds of mobiles twisting in the air currents?
Can you see some materials of interest that are close by and some that are across the room, or are clear to see through the window into the garden?
If mobile babies or toddlers wanted to go to those items of interest at a distance, is there a reasonably easy track for them to follow? Or is the room so full of furniture or large equipment that they would not easily see their route through?