Playing (birth - 33 months)

• Imitate a baby’s facial expressions. Make your own expressions (stick out your tongue, smile, make funny faces) for the baby to imitate.
• Learn the rhymes and movements to traditional seesaw, knee bouncing, riding, tickling, and lift-in-the-air baby games from family members, colleagues, librarians, or your own childhood memories. Play the games repeatedly with individual babies. Watch for signs that they know when the fun parts are coming. Pay attention to how each baby lets you know when has had enough or wants more.
• Let a baby watch as you play a familiar action game with another baby. Notice how the baby who is watching lets you know when she wants a turn.
• Blow soap bubbles for babies to watch, reach for, and bat. Come close so babies can watch your face as you say Ready, set, blow! in a playful voice.
• Give babies a variety of fabric scraps to play with on their own, with you, and with each other. Talk about the colors, textures, and the babies’ actions as you help children find new ways to play with the fabrics.
• Wrap a toy in a fabric swatch for a baby to unroll. Stuff a piece of fabric into a cup and let a baby pull it out or toss a light scarf in the air and let babies try to catch it as it floats down. Mirror babies’ enthusiasm as you talk and play together.
• Play a pat-a-cake or a hand-clapping game, using the baby’s name and encouraging his participation. You can use words in your own language, the baby’s home language, or make up your own words. Play the game in different settings—on the changing table, after washing the baby’s hands, in front of a mirror, or as you play together outdoors.
• Add new verses and actions to a clapping game. Clap your own hands, clap your hand to a baby’s hand, clap feet, tap a drum, or clap objects together. Try playing familiar clapping games with two or three children together.
• Sit on the floor with one or two older babies or with an older baby and a toddler, with your legs spread and feet touching. Roll a ball to a baby and see if you can get her to roll it back. Sing a simple refrain such as I roll the ball to Farah. Farah rolls it back. When the babies are able to roll the ball back and forth with you, see if they can follow your directions to roll the ball to other children.
• Provide safe and interesting materials for babies to look at, listen to, and play with indoors and out. These might include damp sponges, leaves and grass, shiny ribbon, and objects that make musical sounds. (Supervise carefully to avoid choking accidents.) Note what excites babies and narrate their actions. Demonstrate new possibilities when they start to show signs of losing interest.

• Give toddlers bags to carry or wagons to pull. Help them gather a few objects as they pretend to go shopping, deliver mail, or put away the groceries. Together name each object as they are collected and again as they are put away.
• Include toddlers in a simple imitation game, such as “Punchinella.” Have a child stand in the center of a circle while everyone sings:

What can you do, Punchinella, funny fella?

What can you do, Puncinella, funny one?

Then the child in the circle makes a silly motion. The group imitates it, singing:

We can do it, too, Punchinella, funny fella.

We can do it, too, Punchinella, funny one.

• Help two toddlers play a simple cooperative game, such as rolling a ball back and forth, playing on a rocking boat, or pushing a riding toy together.
• Take pictures of toddlers throughout daily routines. Cover the pictures in clear plastic to make durable play cards. Children can match cards, group cards, and talk about what they were doing together as they flip through the picture cards. 
• Encourage toddlers to act out being different animals. Talk about how each animal moves. Read books such as From Head to Toe by Eric Carle and Pretend You're a Cat by Jean Marzollo for inspiration.
• Help toddlers put small collections of toys into baskets or boxes. Encourage children to pull the basket of toys out when they act out favorite stories or when they go on pretend adventures such as to a farm, on a picnic, in a construction zone, or to the ocean. 
• Engage toddlers in creating a simple obstacle course. Lead them in a game of “Follow the Leader” as you go under, over, around, and through. Hide a favorite puppet along the course and give clues to help children find it.
• Make a game out of walking together from one place to another. You can tromp like elephants, canter like horses, or waddle like ducks. Then reach up high or scrunch down low, stretch arms wide or squeeze through a narrow opening, or take baby steps and giant ones. Finally, shout or whisper when you arrive at your destination.
• Make a “car wash” for ride-on vehicles and sand toys. Talk, sing, and pretend with toddlers as they scrub, rinse, and shine. Sing, This is the way we polish the bumpers . . . Share books such as Baby Faces/¡Al agua patos!: Splash! or make your own books of captioned photos of the children playing with water.
• Get toddlers to join you in playing with word sounds. Repeat rhymes, songs, and tongue twisters and add nonsense verses. Make up silly names for puppets and toys and talk in silly voices as quickly or slowly as you can.