Playing with your toddler

Playing and thinking
In her second year, a toddler has the mobility, dexterity, language skills, and curiosity to explore just about everything in her world. Expand her world by taking her to new places -- a different park, your neighbour's rec room -- where she can see and touch and experiment with new objects. At this age, she experiments in order to figure out how the world works. She drops things and watches them fall down. She pushes a ball and it rolls; she pushes a block and it doesn't -- and she learns. She learns the different properties of various objects, shapes, and materials. She learns how to group similar objects together, like blocks of different sizes and shapes, or similar animate beings, like pets -- which behave quite differently from toys.

As her hand control improves, she enjoys playing and learning with toys that she can build, stack, fill, fit together, or sort. She'll enjoy stacking blocks on top of one another and then knocking them down. You can show her how to build a rail tower or a wall, and she may begin to build simple structures in which she might put a toy.

Stacking cups of different sizes can be fun, and she'll soon learn how to stack them in the right order. She will become more aware of differences in size and shape, and learn how to coordinate her hand movements. Toddlers love learning how different objects fit together. They are fascinated by putting pegs in holes or keys in locks, by opening and shutting boxes, and by unscrewing jar tops. As your toddler handles and stacks objects, you might teach her concepts of size, colour, and shape by describing objects as large, small, round, or square; red, blue or white.

Sorting games help her learn how to group together objects that are alike. You can put a bunch of different toy animals together in a pile and then show her how to sort cows, pigs, and sheep into different groups. With even simple jigsaw puzzles, you may have to help her learn how to try out and fit the pieces together.

Quiet play is just as important as active, physical play. By looking at books while you read to him, your toddler learns to associate pictures in books with familiar objects, animals, people, and scenes. Books with bold, clear illustrations are great and, as he gets a little older, illustrations with more detail will interest him.

Creative ventures
Reading to him helps to increase his vocabulary and understanding. Once he decides he likes a story, expect that he'll want to hear it over and over. Books of nursery rhymes and songs are entertaining and develop your child's memory and sense of sequence as he learns the right moment to chime in on the chorus or repetitive parts. Books that have pop-up art or fold-up pages let your child become directly involved with a book, even when he can't yet read.

Your toddler may like it when you draw pictures for her and make up stories about your drawings. If you give her the crayons, she'll begin scribbling, which marks the first step toward writing and drawing. Finger paints are also great for this age; she will enjoy seeing what happens when she mixes different colours together. Soon you'll be able to display a gallery of her artwork on the refrigerator door, which will give her a great sense of pride in her accomplishment.