Provide various sensory materials and activities for your baby to touch, feel, see, hear and taste during daily routines. For example, when feeding, have new different-coloured foods for your baby to taste and try. During diapering, provide toys that your baby can hold and explore.
From birth to age two, children are in the
- Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligence in the Child. New York: Norton.
Through hands-on play, infants develop basic ideas or theories, also known as schemas, to make sense of the world and their immediate environment. These ideas are refined over time through experience. Infants enjoy using all their senses to explore textures, scents, tastes, sights and sounds of things. This includes using their oral faculties to explore, such as by mouthing things. Their use of such materials can be messy, for example, they may crawl through paint. As such, caregivers must use materials that are washable, nontoxic, and that do not have small parts that can be swallowed. Activities should be open-ended so that children have the time and space to construct individual understanding of the materials and their properties. Allow ample time for play and for clean-up.
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