Nursery World - Working it out

Observation will show you how babies and toddlers begin to gain problem-solving skills, and give you ideas for how to stimulate them further, says Jennie Lindon We can easily forget that full communication includes actions and body language, as well as spoken words. Under-threes, who do not yet have the words to put all their thoughts into speech, can still show us that they have made a connection between two separate experiences or are busy working out how something works.

We can easily forget that full communication includes actions and body language, as well as spoken words. Under-threes, who do not yet have the words to put all their thoughts into speech, can still show us that they have made a connection between two separate experiences or are busy working out how something works.

Research with very young babies has shown how busy they are in making sense of the world. A range of simple experiments are described in the book How babies think (see 'Further reading"):

* Babies of a few weeks old were found to show interest in new sights and sounds by their eye movements and by using sucking to make interesting sounds repeat.

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