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Includes section on singing.

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Key points

Caregivers use tightly coordinated and expressive speech and facial expressions when engaging their infants.

Over the first 12 months, infants shift their attention from a speaking caregiver's eyes to their mouth.

Attending to a speaker's mouth gives older infants visual speech cues to support their language learning.

Singing to infants captures infants' attention and influences how they attend to their caregivers' face.

Co-authored by Camila Alviar, Ph.D. and Miriam Lense, Ph.D.
Infants all over the world become masters of the language their community speaks within the first 3 years of life, a surprisingly short time given the complexity of the task. Several ingredients are responsible for their impressive language development skills: infants are born with attentional biases that make them tune into social and linguistic signals, and their young brains are equipped with incredible pattern recognition skills to help them learn specific sounds and structures from the speech they hear.

But it's not just about the skills of the infant. Caregivers naturally modify their speech when engaging with babies compared to when they speak with other adults (or even older children who are already language experts). This "baby talk" (also known as infant-directed speech) helps young children attend to and process speech.

When speaking to infants, adults make their speech more musical; they raise the pitch of their voice and increase the variability of their vocal pitch, exaggerate the different speech sounds, and make their phrases a lot simpler, more repetitive, and more rhythmic.

And it's not only the spoken part of the communication that matters. Adults accompany this auditory speech performance with non-verbal cues that involve simplified but exaggerated movements and gestures and positive and caring facial expressions. Even their head nods and eyebrow movements are carefully, though unconsciously, coordinated with the pauses and pitch changes in their speech.

Infants are therefore provided with rich, multi sensory cues to the meaning of the message, and to the vocabulary, structure, and grammatical rules of the language they are learning.

Infants learn language in part by paying attention to caregivers' faces.

Infants' attention to the face of their engaging caregiver changes dramatically across the first year of life. During the first half of the first year, infants mostly attend to the eyes of the caregiver who is speaking to them.

Looking to the eyes of speakers gives babies information about the emotions and intentions of the people around them. It also helps to establish shared attention; when infants and caregivers pay attention to the same thing at the same time, it helps infants know that what they are paying attention to is important and meaningful.

In the second half of the first year, babies start to hone in on the specific patterns in the speech they are hearing so they can learn the language(s) that surround them. They increasingly engage in babbling, first by combining single vowel and consonant sounds (e.g., ba) and then stringing the sounds together (e.g., dadadada). Babbling lets babies practice speech sounds and communicate with others around them.

During this period, their interest shifts from the eyes to the mouth of the person speaking to them. By focusing their visual attention on the mouth, the infant receives redundant and complementary auditory and visual information about the speech they are hearing. Looking to the mouth of speakers during this developmental period is related to vocabulary size and language comprehension in toddlerhood, suggesting this attentional shift is helpful for language development.

Singing captures and directs infants' attention to caregivers' faces.

In addition to speaking to infants, caregivers across the world also engage infants through singing. Particularly when infants can both hear and see the person engaging them, infants attend longer when someone sings to them rather than speaks to them. But what precisely do infants look at when someone sings to them?

In a recent study in Developmental Science, infants viewed videos of actresses engaging them with speech and song. Eye-tracking technology captured where infants attended for every frame of the video.

As in previous studies of speech across the first year of life, infants shifted their attention from mostly looking at the eyes to mostly looking at the mouth of the actress. But this shift occurred earlier in development and to a greater extent for song than speech. That is, infants look at the mouth of someone engaging them more for song than speech.

What about song makes the mouths of singers so interesting for babies? Take a moment and sing the opening phrase of "Twinkle, twinkle little star," using the well-known and well-loved melody. (Sing to your baby if they're with you!) Now recite the same phrase using speech (not singing or chanting). What do you notice?

Singing modifies the cues a caregiver provides to an infant.

Was your singing rendition slower than your spoken rendition? Was it more rhythmically predictable and evenly timed? Did your mouth move more leading to greater synchrony between your mouth movements and your voice?

It turns out that all these aspects of communication promote infants' attention to someone's mouth. This is particularly meaningful during the latter half of the first year when infants are babbling and preparing to say their first words because it highlights the mouth movements that are used as part of producing speech, and it also calls attention to the bursty stop and start pattern of speech and pauses.

(You may also have noticed you were smiling more during your singing version. Caregivers tend to smile more when playfully singing with their infant and this also promotes infant mouth-looking but more so during the first months of life, when singing's role is primarily for supporting social and emotional bonding between infant and caregiver.)

It's too early to know if this increased mouth-looking by infants during song is also helpful for language learning as it is during speech, a question for future research. But song appears to be a particularly powerful way to attract infants' attention and naturally guide their looking behavior.

What to try at home

You can engage with your baby and support their development by speaking and singing to them face-to-face every day. These face-to-face interactions give babies visual cues to support their attention and learning.

It might also be fun to sing to your infant while looking in a mirror together so that your baby (and you!) can notice how your facial expressions and movements change as you switch between singing and speaking to them. Try singing songs like "If You're Happy and You Know It" using the lyrics below to play around with acting out different emotions as you sing, making your face very expressive and engaging to your baby.

If You're Happy and You Know It (emotions version)
If you're happy and you know it, share a smile (repeat x3)
If you're sad and you know it, get a hug (repeat x3)
If you're mad and you know it, take a breath (repeat x3)

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Get Face-to-Face With Your Infant for Language Development

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Infants pay attention to caregivers' vocal and visual cues to learn language.

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Environment - Chapter 12

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Environment - Chapter 12

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Guidance and Social Emotional Skills - Chapters 10, 11, 13 & guidance

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Guidance and Social Emotional Skills - Chapters 10, 11, 13 & guidance

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Development - Chapters 6-9

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Development - Chapters 6-9

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Care and Education - Chapter 14, 1-5

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Infant Toddler Foundations: Care and Education - Chapter 14, 1-5

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"Remember that discipline is not a set of rigidly enforced mandates, but a process in which the infant learns to become a social being. Social learning, like any other form of learning, is dependent...

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When you’re two years old, a lot of things feel like the end of the world.

Maybe a bug landed in your juice. Maybe you got a pudding stain on your favorite shorts. Maybe your left sock is a little more droopy than the right one, and you can feel a bit of sand in there.

Whether these problems are irreversible catastrophes is beside the point. What matters is that in the moment, they feel like disasters.

So if you’re staring down at that bug floating in your juice, and you feel a meltdown coming on, of course it’ll seem completely absurd when a grown-up tells you:

“You’re okay.”

It’d be hard to find an adult who hasn’t used the phrase to try to comfort an upset child. But the thing is, it just doesn’t work so well — and in some cases, it can make the problem worse. In this article, we’ll talk about how this problem fits into the bigger picture of self-regulation skills, and what we can do to help children tackle tricky emotions and daily frustrations when they bubble up.

So let’s look at what we need to do to move away from “you’re okay.”

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Why “you’re okay” doesn’t really work

First, it’s important to understand that everybody says “you’re okay” with the best intentions.

You want children to be okay, and to reassure them that everything will be alright. And you know that most things that upset two-year-olds aren’t really catastrophes. So of course when you say it, you really mean it.

But when you’re in a situation where you get that urge to say “you’re okay,” odds are that children just aren’t in the right state to take those words to heart.

When children get upset or stressed out, they lose access to their brains’ prefrontal cortex. That’s the logical thinking department — it’s what we’d use to remind ourselves that a spilled cup of applesauce is not, in fact, the end of life as we know it. But in the heat of the moment, our brain’s stress response overpowers the prefrontal cortex. So children just can’t use those emotional tools they need to regulate their emotions.

But also, saying “you’re okay” invalidates children’s very real feeling that, in that moment, things are not okay.

Especially when children are just learning to understand and label their own emotions, negating what they’re feeling sends some confusing mixed signals. And if we do this too much, we risk giving them the impression that it’s not okay to share our feelings with others.

Sue Asquith, an early childhood consultant and a specialist in children’s self-regulation, explains that our biggest priority in these moments of stress should be validating and acknowledging children’s feelings.

“You want children to know they’re secure, that you’ve got their back, and you’ll help them through it,” she says. “We can treat these moments as opportunities to learn more about our children and what matters to them, rather than treating it like a challenge to wash over or sweep under the rug.”

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What you can say instead of “you’re okay”

In those moments where the “you’re okay” impulse starts to bubble up, our biggest priority is teaching children that it’s alright to show and share our emotions.

Whether or not it’s reasonable to be upset over that droopy sock isn’t important. To the three-year-old that would gladly eat a bowl of grapes and ketchup for lunch, ‘reasonable’ has never really been a big priority anyway.

So instead of saying “you’re okay,” which focuses on minimizing the problem, Sue Asquith recommends phrases which focus on validating children’s feelings.

Here are three you might try instead:

I can see that you’re upset.

I’m here for you — I’ve got your back.

It’s okay to be feeling this way.

How you respond in the moment, and how you comfort children, is going to depend on each individual child. Maybe you sit down with them, or use a soft tone, give them a hug, or suggest a different activity to get their mind off the problem.

But right then and there, Sue says, it’s enough to just acknowledge that they’re upset.

“It’s not about fixing what’s gone wrong. It’s about trying to understand the situation from the child’s point of view,” she says. “Over time, we can start to understand each child’s triggers, and build up their strategy bank, so they’ve got the tools to cope with those feelings when they happen.”

The bigger picture: Building self-regulation skills

To help children deal with catastrophic events like bugs landing in their juice, we’ve got to look at building up their self-regulation skills. But that sort of learning isn’t something we can do in the meltdown moment.

As Sue explains, the teachable moment comes after the fact.

“Once the child has calmed down, you can come back to them and say, ‘Wow, that was a really powerful moment for you. I could see you were really upset about that,’” she says.

When we revisit the problem, it’s easier to help children understand why it happened, and what they can do when they’re feeling that way.

Here are some of the ways we might look to boost children’s self-regulation toolkits:

‍Giving children the words to describe their feelings. Oftentimes, children can’t even express what’s going on inside them, which adds another layer of frustration. Recognizing a feeling, and knowing how to share it, makes it easier to deal with the next time it happens.‍

Helping children understand what they’re sensitive to. Perhaps children are particularly upset by certain noises, physical sensations, or social situations. We can help them recognize those triggers, and anticipate when they might happen.‍

Building up children’s libraries of coping tools. Maybe it helps a child to move to another room or try a different activity when they’re upset, or perhaps there's something they can tell themselves that makes the problem seem less scary.

Ultimately, this is about helping children build that self-regulation skill set, so that they feel confident to puzzle through frustrations and other tough feelings on their own. And when we’ve made that emotional knowledge part of children’s long-term learning, it becomes a lot easier to move away from “you’re okay.”

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Why telling upset children “you’re okay” never works | Famly

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Here are three things you can say instead.

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Space to Grow: Creating a Child Care Environment for Infants and Toddlers - Watch top video

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Space to Grow: Creating a Child Care Environment for Infants and Toddlers - Watch top video

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Author(s) J. Ronald Lally, Glynn Butterfield, Peter L. Mangione, and Sheila Signer

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Space to Grow: Creating a Child Care Environment for Infants and Toddlers (2nd Edition)

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The powerful influence of environments on infants and toddlers is described. Very young infants are limited in their ability to move away from an environment or to change one to their liking. The video demonstrates eight qualities for caregivers to consider when they are planning an environment for…

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How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime (ACES)

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How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime (ACES)

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童年創傷如何影響一生健康

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童年創傷不是一件長大就能解決的事。兒科醫生娜汀‧哈里斯 (Nadine Burke Harris) 解釋虐待、忽視、和父母精神健康不良或有藥物或飲酒問題，都會影響兒童的大腦發展。童年經歷影響終身，在高壓環境下長大的兒童比他人得到心肺疾病的比例高三倍。這是一位慷慨激昂的兒科醫生祈求眾人面對、預防和治療心理創傷的演講。

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Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

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A story is powerful and meaningful to families and can often communicate more than a number, a score, or a checklist of skills.

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Kids with sensory processing issues have trouble organizing information from the senses. This means they can be sensitive to and misinterpret information from the five traditional senses, or sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Some kids may also have challenges with the sixth and seventh senses - proprioception and vestibular.

But there'san eighth and lesser-known sense, too. It's called interoception. Here's what you need to know.

Receptors in your muscles and joints tell you where your body parts are. That's the basis for your proprioceptive sense, which makes you aware of where your body is in space. When you take a step, for example, you know your foot is off the ground without having to think about it. Kids with poor proprioception have trouble with this.

Interoception is a similar concept. Just as there are receptors in your muscles and joints, there are also receptors insideyour organs, including your skin. These receptors send information about the inside of your body to your brain. This helps regulate our vital functions like body temperature, hunger, thirst, digestion, and heart rate.

Interoception helps you understand and feel what's going on inside your body. For instance, you know if your heart is beating fast or if you need to breathe more deeply. You're able to tell if you need to use the bathroom. You know if you're hungry, full, hot, cold, thirsty, nauseated, itchy, or ticklish.

For kids with sensory processing issues, the brain may have trouble making sense of that information. They may not be able to tell when they're feeling pain or when their bladder is full. An itch may feel like pain or pain may feel ticklish.

Kids who struggle with the interoceptive sense can also have trouble "feeling" their emotions. They may not be as tuned in to the body cues that help interpret emotion. Without being able to feel and interpret those body sensations, it's harder to clearly identify the emotion.

For instance, kids may not "feel" fear because they don't recognize that their muscles are tense, their breathing is shallow, and their heart is racing.

Interoception and self-regulation

Having trouble with this sense can also make self-regulation a challenge. When you're able to tell that you're thirsty, you know to take a drink. When you can feel that your bladder is full, you know to use the bathroom. When you feel a sense of frustration, you know to explain what's troubling you.

For some kids, this system doesn't work well and they can't regulate certain responses. Some kids may experience bedwetting. Or they may not know why they're feeling off and can have meltdowns. Kids who struggle with these things may not be able to identify the real source of their discomfort.

Kids who are sensory seekers may crave interoceptive input. They may move quickly because breathing fast feels right to them. They may not eat or drink as much as other kids because being hungry and thirsty feels comfortable to them.

But kids with sensory processing issues can react in other ways, too. Some kids may:

Find interoceptive input irritating. Kids who are hypersensitive tosensory input may overreact to interoceptive sensations. For instance, they may eat more than other kids to avoid feeling hunger pangs. They may also use the bathroom more often than necessary because they don't like the way a full bladder feels.

Respond inappropriately to interoceptive input. Kids who are under-responsive to sensory input may not feel or respond to sensations when they should. They may take longer than other kids to learn to use the toilet or have more frequent accidents. They may not eat as often as others because they may not feel hunger or thirst.

Trouble with interoception isn't as well known as other sensory processing issues. Experts are still learning what techniques can help kids who struggle with it. Some experts think that mindfulness activities like meditation can help kids be more aware of interoceptive sensations in their bodies.

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Kids with sensory processing issues have trouble organizing information from the senses. This means they can be sensitive to and misinterpret information from the five traditional senses, or sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Some kids may also have challenges with the sixth and seventh senses - proprioception and vestibular.

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Temperament Graphing: for Part 2 of In-Class Assignment (Part 1 is in Microsoft Forms)

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Temperament Graphing: for Part 2 of In-Class Assignment (Part 1 is in Microsoft Forms)

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Example of Temperament Graphing for In-Class Assignment

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Example of Temperament Graphing for In-Class Assignment

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Baby Doll Circle Time - Tips from the Author Dr. Becky Bailey

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Mama Lisa's World: International Music & Culture

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Mama Lisa's World: International Music & Culture

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Explore site and reflect on how you might be able to utilize it (remember "Control F")

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Mama Lisa's World of Children and International Culture

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Mama Lisa's World of Children and International Culture

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Mama Lisa's World presents thousands of traditional kids songs from over a hundred countries and cultures! We also feature a major collection of Mother Goose Rhymes, global recipes, holiday traditions and lively conversations about childhood around the world.

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Mama Lisa's World: International Music & Culture

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Mama Lisa's World: International Music & Culture

# data[].attributes.body
Explore site and reflect on how you might be able to utilize it (remember "Control F")

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Mama Lisa's World of Children and International Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mama Lisa's World of Children and International Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mama Lisa's World presents thousands of traditional kids songs from over a hundred countries and cultures! We also feature a major collection of Mother Goose Rhymes, global recipes, holiday traditions and lively conversations about childhood around the world.

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Teacher-Loose Parts video- Use for Chapter 4: Choose One (Option 2)

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Teacher-Loose Parts video- Use for Chapter 4: Choose One (Option 2)

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Experiencing, Managing, and Expressing Emotions

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Experiencing, Managing, and Expressing Emotions

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The Importance of Observation in Early Childhood Education

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The Importance of Observation in Early Childhood Education

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HiMama Blog - Resources for Daycare Centers

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Observations are part of the day-to-day life of an early childhood educator. Most childcare providers understand the role of observation but do they understand why it's important? Early childhood education is not just about educating children. It's about exploration, learning, and observing play. Educators play an important role in helping children meet developmental milestones and observation is how educators learn more about each and every child they work with.

Observation is often seen as one of the most simple, yet effective methods of assessing young children as they develop. For an early childhood educator, observing a child begins by noting how each child behaves, learns, reacts to new situations, and interacts with others. An educator then takes this information and creates activities to promote growth in skills, document the success of those skills, and then reflect and assess.

What is observation in early childhood education? 🤔

Observation is the process of tracking children's behavior over a period of time. Through meaningful and detailed documentation, educators are able to see patterns and plan age-appropriate activities, gain insight into how a child thinks about the world, and provide opportunities to change the learning environment to promote growth and development. The history of early childhood education explains many of the influences that have shaped the field of early childhood education into what it is today.

Why do we observe children's development? 🧐

When an educator sits back and observes a child within their care, they can then better understand the children's strengths or weaknesses. Through observations, educators' programming can help make improvements to the environment and facilitate learning.
Observation of a child's behavior can:

Help an educator better understand why a child might be having challenging behavior

Identify special needs

Better understand the child

Allows for documentation of skills

Shows the child's communication style

See what their interactions with their peers are like

Observation focuses on how: how did the child get there vs. the product the child used. The observation process is very straightforward: observe and reflect, document and gather evidence, plan and act, and finally, assess. Try using this free template! You only assess over long periods of time. Typically once every six months depending on the type of assessment you are using.

What are the types of documentation? 📋

Having evidence of skill growth helps gain better insight into where a child is at. Having meaningful interactions when a child is playing can allow for the project to continue over long periods of time and keep the child's interest up.

Written observations with language samples. Example: Bobby is building with the blocks. He is stacking all the square blocks and then topping them off with a triangular block. When I asked Bobby what he was creating his response was "This is my house, because it has a point at the top".

Drawings or attempts of writing - Grab that picture before it ends up in the recycling!

Pictures of creations - Take a moment to capture that masterpiece before tidy-up time!

Videos - Videos can be so powerful and if you are using digital documentation it's much easier to catch those moments!

Learning stories with direct links to skills - Typically add a picture and tag with a skill from your framework.

Observations also help build progress reports ( try using this free template!). Typically, centers will have ongoing tracking of each child's skills and development and report these back to families. This is the initial step before going into an assessment.

What do educators track?🔀

Educators look to help grow the child as a whole and want to encourage growth and development of skills in all areas. The primary areas of focus are:

Cognitive development

Physical development

Social development

Emotional development

Language and literacy development

Depending on the style of teaching or curriculum there may be other areas of focus but these will always be the key ones. Each of these areas of development impact one another.

Observations and assessments📓

You've been gathering observations, changing the environment around, and providing meaningful activities to promote growth, now what? Well, as children learn more skills and adapt to different situations, you have evidence gathered to prove this. Through pictures and written observations that you have gathered, it's now time to reflect on all this hard work and assess. Assessments can't be done without evidence and observations are a huge piece of evidence. There are many different types of assessments you can choose to do, but first, make sure you have been trained on how to assess properly. Some assessments are as simple as a checklist and some require certification. Also, make sure the assessment you use is approved in your area and ties to the values and teaching style of your center.

Connect with parents👨‍👨‍👧

The final piece to observations is bringing this information back to parents and working with them directly to make sure the child is supported both at home and in the classroom. Have meetings with parents to not only discuss any ongoing issues or problems but also to plan what the goals are for their child. With a good working relationship with parents, a child can be very successful.

Tying these all together is no easy task and for many educators, it is very time-consuming, but it is very important. Many centers have made the switch to HiMama because of this. Within the app, teachers can tag skills, observe, reflect, and then assess using work sampling or ounce. All the while sharing updates with families! Today with COVID-19 on the doorstep, having open communication with parents is very important as many can not come in the center to observe how the classroom is growing.

Related Posts

Photo Source - University of Alaska.

Before you go...

Is your center prepared for today's childcare expectations?

Parents are looking for centers that offer digital parental communication, observations and assessments, shared photo and video updates, and contactless check-in and billing.

HiMama is an all-in-one app to help you with all that, and boost your enrollment! Get a FREE 15-minute tour with us here.

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The Importance of Observation in Early Childhood Education

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Assessing toddler development through observation will help ECEs track a child's learning characteristics. See why it's important along with examples.

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Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

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Use for Chapter 14: Choose One (Option 2)

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Use for Chapter 14: Choose One (Option 2)

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To order your CDA Competency Standards book

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Environment Signature Assignment - Learning Plan

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Environment Signature Assignment - Learning Plan

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Use if you choose option 2 for college credit.

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Familiarize yourself with this for use in our Saturday conference call.  

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Code of Ethical Conduct and Statement of Commitment

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The NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct offers guidelines for responsible behavior and sets forth a common basis for resolving the principal ethical dilemmas encountered in early childhood care and education.

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This may be used for the college credit extension for the Family Relationships Signature Project.

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Family Engagement - National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations

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At every tier of the Pyramid Model, practitioners and programs should consider what strategies might be used to welcome and support diverse families; how to create opportunities to learn from families; strategies for partnering with families to promote child outcomes; and providing the supports and services that families might need to promote their child's skill [...]

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This could be used for your Family Engagement Signature project.

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Message in a Backpack™ is a column that appears in Teaching Young Children. Print these documents out and send them home with children as a resource for their families!

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This video helps you to decide what to do with your observations

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Why should we formally observe children?

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Funds of Knowledge Reflection Assignment:  Chapter 13 Choose One (Option 1) 

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Funds of Knowledge Reflection Assignment:  Chapter 13 Choose One (Option 1) 

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Chapter 10 Choose One (Options 3) Worksheet

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Chapter 10 Choose One (Options 3) Worksheet

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Chapter 10 Choose One (Option 3) Article: Understanding Your Child's Behavior

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Chapter 10 Choose One (Option 3) Article: Understanding Your Child's Behavior

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Chapter 7: Choose One (Option 2): 10 AWESOME GROSS MOTOR ACTIVITIES FOR BABIES + TODDLERS

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Chapter 7: Choose One (Option 2): 10 AWESOME GROSS MOTOR ACTIVITIES FOR BABIES + TODDLERS

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Babies and Toddlers are active little ones that are in constant search of ways to practice and develop their Gross Motor skills. I don't think we often think of learning to crawl or balance or walk as curriculum, but for babies and younger toddlers this is what they are learning.

This is what they are interested in right now.

When my twins were in this crawling, cruising, starting to walk phase they wanted to be constantly in motion. This can be crazy making, but if you give them some activities to do that target these developing gross motor skills you will have happy and eventually tuckered out (yay nap time!) little ones.

Here are 10 of our favorite ways to move little bodies while you learn, create, and have fun.
affiliate links are included below. thanks for your support!
1. Big Paper Paint

One of the things I love most about Children's Museums is the opportunity for large scale art. They have the space and materials to scale an entire wall with art. To have a cooperative mural covering a large table. To have a large weaving experience. To have an easel big enough for several children to create.

Inspired by these experiences, this is one of my favorite activities to do at home with older infants and young toddlers. This is a great activity for babies that encourages crawling or early walking while you paint.
Materials:
Cover your floor in paper - the bigger the better.
Clear the general area around the paper.
Pour paint onto a tray or plate.

I suggest striping your child down to their diaper and then offer them trays of different colored paint. I placed the trays in a couple different places around the paper to encourage them to crawl.
Allow them to crawl, walk, and paint everywhere on the paper and themselves. This is obviously messy - but the large scale of the painting gives them space to move around and explore their bodies while they paint.

Remove paint trays to a counter or sink. Wash these later at your convenience.
Gate off the area if possible. This obviously makes it easier to try to clean without worrying about little ones crawling back into the area.
Either way, cleaning off your little ones is the first step. Mine went straight in the bathtub. The wonderful thing about tempera paint is how easily it washes right off.
Once your infants are cleaned off and happily situated with another activity or fast asleep, remove the paper from the floor. Save if so desired. Use a wet washcloth or wet wipe to clean any stray paint marks on the floor. Clorox wipes work well for me.

2. Texture Crawl

This was inspired by a seriously cool floor at the Children's Museum in Madison WI. This is a quick do-it-yourself texture floor perfect for rolling and crawling babies.
Set Up:
Tape a long piece of butcher paper to the floor. Put it in a high traffic play area for your child to explore.

Cut your chosen materials down, if needed, to fit within the butcher paper. Attach your textured materials spaced out along the paper by securing all four corners with tape. Don't be shy with the tape. The more thorough you are with this step, the better it will hold up. However, make sure you are leaving an adequate amount of the material exposed for exploration.
Activity:
Your infant(s) will likely discover this on their own - little ones tend to be naturally curious and observant of newness. As they explore the area, you can provide them with words to describe the textures they discover such as; scratchy, bumpy, shiny, smooth, etc.

3. Playmat Tunnel

Once my twins started moving, our playmat quickly became a discarded object in the corner until I had this brainstorm one afternoon. This is another fun way to utilize a playmat once your kids are on the move.

Set Up:
Cover two sides with blankets to create a tunnel.

Activity:
I sat on the opposite side to encourage my babies to crawl through. It was a short, non-intimidating tunnel so with only mild encouragement they ventured through. Place other exciting objects on the opposite side of the tunnel to encourage them to crawl back and forth. Play peekaboo around the sides.

Clean Up:
Remove the blankets when you are done with playtime. This activity should definitely be supervised at all times.

4. DIY Climbing Box

Babies love to crawl over, climb on, and push things. Instead of following them around saying "No" all day, I decided to make something that they could use. The idea to form when I watched my daughter and a diaper wipe box. For most of a day I watched her push it around and sit on it, suddenly...inspiration struck!

1. I filled the box to the top with textbooks I will probably never read again and some newspaper both to add weight to the box and support it under my child's weight.
2. Then I taped it shut.
3. Covered it completely with duct tape. I attempted to make it look cute - not sure I succeeded.

My kids were thrilled. It has quickly become a fun heavy-work object to push, as well as a stool. Ours held up brilliantly through 3 years and 4 moves. Our twins used them endlessly for pushing, climbing on, or as part of an obstacle course.

5. Stuffed Friend Slide

Imaginative and social play activity integrated into movement activity with toddlers. All you need is a stuffed animal (or many) and a slide. We used our backyard toddler slide.

Rolling things down the slide is a popular toddler activity. We took it a step forward and took their stuffed friends and babies for a slide. We did this in our backyard, but it could also be done at a playground.

To start, I simply asked my toddlers if they thought Baby and Monkey would like to play on the slide with them. They thought it was a fabulous idea and so we headed outside with our friends in tow.

Once at the slide, depending on your toddler's climbing skills you may have to hold their stuffed animal while they climb the slide. Once at the top ask if they would rather send the animal down first or have it slide next to them. In our case, some social practice with turn taking also took place as they waited for each other to go down the slide.

Continue for as long as they are interested. We eventually went back in and found some more friends that wanted to slide.

6. Animal Pull

Perfect activity for older infants or younger toddlers who are thrilled with their newly discovered walking abilities. Toddlers love pushing and pulling things. This activity provides them an additional opportunity for pulling something.

Simply tie a ribbon around the neck or middle of an animal. I used a darling collection of animals from an infant floor mat that went out of use when our little guys started moving. Most stuffed animals would work, although ones with four legs balance a little better.

The first time I brought these animals out I modeled "taking an animal for a walk." My toddlers quickly imitated me and walked their animals back and forth, back and forth across our house. Super simple but my twins played with these endless for other a week.

7. Toddler Yoga

Our toddlers' first introduction to yoga was them imitating my movements alongside my mat on a typical morning and from there we have slowly built their skills. If you think your child would enjoy moving their body in a different way, feel free to introduce them to yoga independently of any workout you may do.

Here are some tips to start simple yoga with toddlers:

Prepare a quiet space with mats or blankets to stand on. I cut a $10 yoga mat in half and it was the perfect size for each of my twins to have their own yoga space.

Invite them to imitate simple poses such as Tree Pose or Downward Dog.

Having a book to follow may help engage them further. One of our favorites is "Little Yoga: A Toddler's First Book of Yoga" by Rebecca Whitford and Martina Selway.

Try to have fun, follow their lead, and not worry to much about them getting it "right."

End by teaching them to say Namaste to each other.

8. Up and Down Obstacle Course

Toddlers will working on understanding the concepts of up and down, while they practice the gross motor skill of stepping up and down.

Set Up:
Position your boxes and stools around a room to create a course.

Activity:
Have your toddler line up behind you and demonstrate the course for them with energetic "up!" and "down!" as you go over the obstacles. From there encourage them to do it again and again.

9. Finding Circles

This is a toddler activity that combines shape recognition, flashlight play, and movement.

Cut out some circles with Construction Paper
Tape them around your classroom or home at varying heights and spaces.
Consider positional words when placing (up, down, under, above, etc)
Gather Flashlights - one for each child

Activity:
Invite your child to go on a Circle Hunt with you. Give each child a flashlight and ask if they can shine their light on a circle. You may have to model this the first couple of times. Use language to describe where they find the circles and/or what color circle. For example, "you found a blue one above your head" or "that circle is next to the light switch" Soon you will have kids animated and running all over crying out "I found a circle!"

10. Toddler Tennis

This is an activity for you to do at the park with your child(ren) which was inspired by some amazing toddler teachers I worked with at UMCDC. To be fair, this only very loosely represents tennis, but it is a great movement and social skills activity.

Bring a couple of large bouncy balls (soccer or other balls work too) with you to a nearby tennis court.
Show your toddler how to bounce or throw the ball over the net. Encourage them to stand on the other side and bounce it back to you. Encourage them further to bounce the ball over the net to a peer if you have other children along.

Our goal was to encourage social interaction, build gross motor skills, and have fun. There were no rules or expectations beyond that. Have fun, move around, and be silly together.

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10 Awesome Gross Motor Activities for Babies + Toddlers

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Babies and Toddlers are active little ones that are in constant search of ways to practice and develop their Gross Motor skills. I don't think we often think of learning to crawl or balance or walk as curriculum, but for babies and younger toddlers this is what they are learning.

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Chapter 7: Choose One (Option 2) - 9 Gross Motor Skills Activities for Toddlers

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Chapter 7: Choose One (Option 2) - 9 Gross Motor Skills Activities for Toddlers

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In this post, I'm going to cover my favorite gross motor activities for toddlers.

Our daughter K (who just turned 18 months) loves to move and play, so I've had to be creative to think of different activities we can do to keep her happy and help develop her gross motor skills.

Let's go over the best gross motor activities we've been doing with K:

#1 - Couch Climbing

I wanted to include this one first, as we started this one well before K could walk, and it's an activity that pretty much all toddlers can do at home.

You can stack pillows at the base of the couch to make a little step for your toddler to use to climb up onto the couch on their own.

And you can even make it the perfect height so that they need to do a little work pulling themselves up to get up on the couch.

When K was crawling, we would let her crawl all over our couch and leave some pillows or pilled up blankets on it so she could work on crawling over them.

Crawling or walking on the cushions adds an extra stability factor to help them develop coordination and balance.

When they are young, make sure you're always there to ensure they don't fall off the couch!

#2 - Obstacle Course

Here's another activity you can do to work on gross motor skills with a toddler regardless if they can walk yet or not.

When K first started crawling, we set up the cushions from her Nugget Comfort kids couch in various obstacle course style setups.

We had little ramps that she could crawl up and slide down and set the cushions up in a teepee shape for her to crawl under.

If you are looking for something great for gross motor skills development in babies, I highly recommend the Nugget Comfort, as you can set up the cushions in a variety of different ways to encourage movement.

As her physical skills developed, we've continued to make the obstacle course play areas more advanced.

We now have stepping stones that she is stepping on and off of, a little toy box she climbs up and over, and then a bigger ramp that she crawls up to make it to the top.

I love the obstacle course idea for promoting gross motor skills in toddlers, as you can be creative with how you set them up, and you can use items around your house.

Changing up the obstacle course you set up frequently will also keep your little one engaged and challenge them in different ways.

#3 - Yoga

Yoga is a fun one that our daughter and many kids will naturally do on their own when they are exploring with movements.

K started to naturally do the "downward dog" yoga pose when she was exploring movements after she learned how to crawl.

Still Loves Yoga at 23 Months

Anytime she went into the downward dog pose, we would say something like "Are you doing the downward dog?"

Eventually, she learned the name of what she was doing and will often do it during play.

Without instruction, she's turned it into different yoga-type poses by lifting one leg up in the air as she explores various movements with her body.

At 18 months, we've started to model a few more yoga poses to her to see if she's interested in learning more.

We've introduced plank, and upward facing dog and, although she hasn't fully caught on to either, her attempts are the cutest thing I've seen.

Yoga is excellent for strength, stability, coordination, and more. And it's never too young to introduce yoga in a fun way for kids!

#4 - Dancing

Did you know dancing is a great way to develop gross motor skills?

You might already be doing this with your toddler and not have realized that it's great for their physical development.

Dancing will help improve balance, coordination, and stability.

And it also has a positive cognitive benefit as they develop a memory of dances and pattern recognition.

The great thing about dancing is that it can be done anywhere and all you need is some music.

I might be the worst dancer in the world, but my little one seems to think I'm great (or she's laughing at me and not with me) and she loves to dance with me 🙂

Get up and get moving with your little one!

#5 - Practical Life

Although you might think of practical life skill activities more for fine motor development, many of them are great for gross motor development as well.

Practical Life skills that require a lot of movement and coordination include loading and unloading laundry, sweeping or mopping, watering plants with a heavy (not too heavy!) watering can, or helping with yard work.

I recently was out back raking leaves and putting broken branches in our wheelbarrow and K was showing interest in helping me, so we purchased her a toddler-sized rake to help.

She now attempts to rake up leaves with me and will help carry things over to the wheelbarrow getting in some great gross motor development.

#6 - Playgrounds

Playgrounds were designed to promote gross motor skill development, and are great for toddlers to explore.

There will be something for toddlers at every playground (even if they aren't walking or climbing much yet), but you may also be able to find smaller playgrounds specifically designed for toddlers in your local area.

Our neighborhood has a smaller playground for younger kids and a bigger playground for older kids. K enjoys playing at both playgrounds and it's nice to switch things up. Don't be afraid to explore the bigger playgrounds with supervision!

Toddlers won't be able to take advantage of all the benefits that older kids will get from playgrounds (jumping, swinging on monkey bars, etc.), but they will get a unique gross motor challenge from playing on playgrounds that you wouldn't get in your home.

#7 - Walking Up And Down Hills

Here's an activity that many parents might not think of, but is excellent for toddler gross motor skill development - simply having them walk up and down small hills with you.

When they are first learning how to walk, you would want just a very slight incline, but as they develop their strength and coordination, you can start moving up to bigger and steeper hills.

Walking up hills is great to promote leg strength while walking down a hill provides a unique gross motor development opportunity of deceleration strength, on top of coordination and balance.

Hills offer a unique challenge to a child that they don't get in everyday life walking on flat surfaces.

I bring my daughter to a local park, and we walk up and down the hill picking flowers. She loves it and she gets a great gross motor skill "workout" out of it.

#8 - Games

Games can include a wide variety of activities that range from your common sports to being creative and creating your own little games in your home.

One idea is just a simple game of "Chase."

I think pretty much all kids loved to be chased around, and it makes for a great gross motor activity.

Our daughter will run away when we say we are going to chase her, and then she is just anticipating when we will catch up to her and tickle her with a big smile on her face.

This is an easy and fun way to get your toddler to practice running (or walking fast) to improve coordination and balance.

Playing catch is another great activity to work on with your toddler (I actually wrote a guide to teach your toddler how to learn catch). It can promote hand-eye coordination, balance, and arm strength.

Our daughter also loves kicking small balls around the house and backyard (which we call soccer). She even attempts to play hockey with a small stick and net we bought her.

Any sport you can think of to introduce to your toddler will be great for promoting gross motor skills. But don't expect them to master sports this early - just have fun with it!

Besides traditional sports, you can make up simple games to play in your home or outside that involve movement.

This can be as simple as teaching your toddler to try and stand on one leg (they probably won't be able to yet, but our daughter has fun trying).

Or as they get older, you can try and teach them more complex games like "red light, green light".

The type of games you teach your toddler will depend on their age and gross motor abilities, but with a little creativity, you can create many different games to play with your little one.

#9 - Pikler Triangle or Indoor Climbing Toys

A popular purchase in the Montessori circles is Pikler Triangles.

These wooden toys, first made over 100 years ago, make for great climbing frames for kids to explore movement on.

Indoor climbing toys don't have to be limited to Pikler Triangles, there are many other great activities out there such as climbing arches, wooden ramps, and balance boards.

We are in the middle of putting together a mini gross motor skill development playroom area in our basement that will feature a Pikler triangle, climbing arch, wooden ramp/slide, and a wooden balance board.

While it isn't a cheap investment to buy quality climbing toys, I think it will be great for our daughter's development (especially in the cold winter months here in Canada).

She is an active little girl and loves climbing, so we wanted somewhere for her to express that.

Gross Motor Activities Recap

Personally, I think gross motor skill development is important at a young age as a kid's nervous system and body are being developed so much in their toddler years.

Movement and hands-on learning are talked about a lot in the Montessori Method, and I think these gross motor activities listed above are a great way to help your child not only develop their gross motor skills but also have fun and learn.

The activities listed above are my current favorite gross motor activities for toddlers, but I'm always looking to expand our play...

Do you have any favorites not mentioned here? Let me know in the comments as I'd love to find more ways to play with my daughter 🙂

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9 Gross Motor Activities For Toddlers - Best Activties For 1-Year-Old

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In this post, I'm going to cover my favorite gross motor activities for toddlers. Our daughter K (who just turned 18 months) loves to move and play, so I've had to be creative to think of different activities we can do to keep her happy and help develop her gross motor skills.

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Chapter 7: Choose One (Option 2) - Gross Motor Skills Activities for Little Kids

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Chapter 7: Choose One (Option 2) - Gross Motor Skills Activities for Little Kids

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Little kids can develop their gross motor skills through a variety of fun activities. Active play that uses the large muscles of the legs, arms, and trunk is important for your preschooler's health and physical development. Learning to harness the power of their muscles to run, jump, throw, catch, and kick is vital to the growth of their bodies and brains. Plus, it's a lot of fun.

Types of Gross Motor Skills Activities For Kids

Indoor: Building, dancing, hopping, arts and crafts, pretend play, pulling, pushing

Outdoor: Balancing, climbing, reaching, riding, swimming, playground play, walking, throwing, catching

Games: Hit the target, jump the brook, paper plate skates, soccer, tag

Fine Motor Skills: Coloring, cooking, cutting, fingerplay, stringing beads, puzzles, pupped shows, sand play, sidewalk chalk

Indoor Gross Motor Activities

Muscle-moving play doesn't have to take up a ton of room. Given just a little floor space, your child can enjoy these skill-building activities inside.

Building and navigating: Create obstacle courses with furniture, pillows, boxes, and blankets.

Dancing: Kids go can freestyle or follow songs with movements, such as "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," "I'm a Little Teapot," "The Wheels on the Bus," or "Popcorn."

Hopping: Set up targets with masking tape or cardboard to make jumping from place to place on the floor more fun.

Large-scale arts and crafts activities: These stimulate both large motor skills and creativity.

Playing pretend: Kids boost motor skills when they use their bodies to become waddling ducks, stiff-legged robots, galloping horses, soaring planes, or whatever they can imagine.

Pulling and pushing: Playing with wagons, large trucks, doll strollers, or shopping carts helps develop upper-body strength and coordination.

Formal Classes for Preschoolers

Dance and movement classes, like pre-ballet or tumbling, can be fun and provide motor-development skills, but they can be expensive. These organized activities are by no means essential to a child's development; it's more important that kids have time and opportunity to move their bodies.

Outdoor Gross Motor Activities

Kids have plenty of room outside to play hard and challenge their muscles. Help them by suggesting activities such as:

Balancing: Have your child walk on a low beam or plank at the playground or a homemade balance beam.

Climbing, stretching, and reaching: Set up obstacle courses with rocks, logs, or playground equipment.

Riding: Encouage kids to play with tricycles, scooters, and other ride-on toys.

Swimming: Most kids love water play of all kinds, from swimming to playing with water squirters or sprinklers.

Playground play: Playgrounds offer opportunities to pump their legs on a swing, shoot down a slide, climb ladders, and run freely, often with friends.

Walking: Take a walk around the neighborhood or a park. For variety, add in marching, jogging, skipping, hopping, or even musical instruments to form a parade. As you walk, tell stories, look for colors, count, or play games.

Throwing and catching: Provide large, lightweight, soft balls for throwing, catching, kicking, and rolling.

Gross Motor Skills Games

Some activities for developing gross motor skills work best outside, but others can be done indoors. Motivate major movement with games such as:

Hit the target: Use hula hoops or sidewalk chalk to designate targets on the ground, then have kids aim bean bags or balls (even snowballs).

Jump the brook: Set out two jump ropes, or draw two chalk lines to represent the brook, and have kids try to jump over it. Try making it wider in some spots and narrower in others for a few levels of challenge.

Paper plate skates: Use paper plates to glide along on a carpet. Try to imitate speed skaters, hockey players, or figure skaters.

Soccer: Instead of playing a real game, just let kids enjoy kicking the ball and aiming it toward a goal or a large cardboard box or laundry basket turned on its side. For indoor play, you can use crumpled paper instead of balls.

Tag: Teach little ones simple ways to play tag or other classic games such as Follow the Leader, Mother May I, and Simon Says.

Avoid or modify games that force kids to sit still or to be eliminated from play, such as Duck Duck Goose or Musical Chairs.

Fine Motor Skills for Preschoolers

Kids this age are also working on fine motor skills, which are crucial to their ability to perform tasks like holding a pencil, cut with scissors, use silverware to eat, and more. These activities can help children strengthen and learn to use the small muscles in their fingers and hands.

Coloring and tracing with crayons, pencils, or markers

Cooking (pouring, shaking, sprinkling, kneading, tearing, cutting with a butter knife)

Cutting with safety scissors

Fingerplays (songs such as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" that have accompanying hand movements)

Lacing cards or stringing beads

Manipulative toys such as blocks, puzzles, or dolls with clothes to take on and off

Puppet shows

Sand play (pouring, scooping, sifting, building)

Sidewalk chalk or any art project, like finger painting or playing with clay

A Word From Verywell

Your preschooler needs plenty of time to play and explore different activities that will help them develop their motor skills. Look for activities that will help them build strength in all their muscles, big and small.

Additional Reading

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Gross Motor Skills Activities for Little Kids

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Little kids should spend hours every day on gross motor activities. Learn ways for preschoolers to have healthy and active fun indoors and outdoors.

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Infant Toddler Temperament Tool:  Intro to Temperament

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Infant Toddler Temperament Tool:  Intro to Temperament

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The Role of Co-regulation in building Self-regulation Skills 

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The Role of Co-regulation in building Self-regulation Skills 

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Self-regulation is influenced by external factors like the environment and interactions with others and by internal factors such as temperament. The particular temperament children are born with impacts how easily they are able to regulate themselves.

by Linda Gillespie

Two-month-old Daryl cries softly as he wakes up from his nap. Jodi, his teacher, calls to him, saying, "I hear you, Daryl. Miss Jodi is coming as soon as she washes her hands." Daryl quiets.

Four-month-old Charlotte rubs her eyes and begins to whimper. Her teacher, Jan, says, "You're getting tired, aren't you?" Jan sits in a rocker and begins to rock and hum to Charlotte. Charlotte calms, and Jan places her in her crib, gently patting her tummy before walking away. Charlotte fusses just for a minute before drifting off to sleep.

Ten-month-old Bess is sitting with a shape sorter. She is concentrating and trying very hard to push the round shape into the square hole. Vivian, her family child care provider, sits nearby, tending to a crying baby. Bess looks at the baby, catches Vivian's eye, then goes back to concentrating on the shape-sorting task. A few minutes later, Bess moves her shape to the round hole and it falls in. Bess looks up and Vivian smiles: "You did it!" Bess smiles at Vivian before picking up the next shape.

Thirty-month-old Shane has the toy camera, one of the children's favorite toys in the classroom. Kayla comes over and tries to take it out of his hands, and Shane pulls it away. Liz, their teacher, squats down and says to Shane, "Remember when Kayla was playing with that camera yesterday and you really wanted it? That's how she feels now-she really wants it. Will you give it to her when you are done playing with it?" Shane looks at his teacher, then at the camera, and then at his friend Kayla. A few minutes later he takes the camera over to Kayla. "Thank you, Shane, that was very kind of you," Liz says.

Each of these adults is facilitating the development of self-regulation, or the "conscious control of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors" (McClelland & Tominey 2014, 2). Another way of thinking about self-regulation is as a person's ability to manage attention and emotions well enough to complete tasks, organize behavior, control impulses, and solve problems constructively (Murray et al. 2015). When children struggle with self-regulation, it is difficult for them to sit still, concentrate, and participate in learning activities.

Each of the educators above is supporting self-regulation skills by co-regulating with the children they care for. Co-regulation is defined as warm and responsive interactions that provide the support, coaching, and modeling children need to "understand, express, and modulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors" (Murray et al. 2015, 14). Co-regulating requires teachers and providers to pay close attention to the cues children send and respond consistently and sensitively over time with just the right amount of support. Let's take a closer look at these emerging self-regulation skills and how they are supported and nurtured from infancy onward.

In the beginning, very young children's capacity for self-regulation is limited, and they are very dependent on their teachers for co-regulation. For those working with infants and toddlers, warm and responsive interactions are truly foundational for the development of self-regulation-as we see in the examples with Daryl and Charlotte. The teachers' prompt and caring interactions support each baby's ability to begin to self-regulate and manage the tasks of waiting, self-soothing, and transitioning between activities. In these examples, Daryl is able to wait while Jodi finishes washing her hands, and Charlotte learns to soothe herself to fall asleep. Both babies have learned over time that their teachers will be there to offer support, if and when they need it.

When children's needs are met in this way, the children grow to learn that they can trust the adults in their world to care for them. Having the expectation that their needs will be met allows infants to relax their demands and begin to develop self-soothing skills, like sucking on their fingers or thumbs, twisting their hair, and so on. Learning to self-soothe is a trial-and-error process as babies test ways to calm themselves. They continue to need adult assistance with soothing and regulating, especially when in stressful situations, but their dependence on others for help lessens as they get older. Learning self-regulation skills by experiencing tuned-in caregiving in early childhood is very important, as it is linked to greater success both academically and socially, through adulthood (Raby et al. 2015).

Children use their growing ability to self-regulate in more complex ways over time. Look at Bess as she concentrates on putting the shape into the correct hole. She is exercising the cognitive aspect of self-regulation as she directs her attention to the task at hand. Bess uses her relationship with Vivian as a secure base when the challenge of this task approaches frustration. She briefly turns her attention to Vivian for support and is then able to return to her task.

At 30 months, we see Shane beginning to demonstrate understanding of his friend Kayla's feelings. The relationship with Liz and her nurturing support help Shane make the connection between his own feelings and those of his friend-which is the root of empathy. His teacher, Liz, has acted as a bridge to assist Shane in this developmentally challenging task. This type of social-emotional learning can happen only in a supportive, nurturing environment where children feel safe and valued and where their needs are met consistently.

Self-regulation is influenced by external factors like the environment and interactions with others and by internal factors such as temperament. The particular temperament children are born with impacts how easily they are able to regulate themselves. Children also exhibit differences in emotional intensity-or how strongly they experience and express their feelings. We notice that children at very early ages respond differently to stimuli such as light, noise, scent, touch, and temperature. Children also differ in their ability to manage change and transitions. These are just a few of the differences among children that teachers may encounter. Each requires a calibrated response that matches the needs and temperament of the individual child. When teachers co-regulate, or tune their responses to the various needs of individual children, they support the skill of self-regulation in a group setting.

Here are some tips to promote self-regulation in very young children:

Create an environment where each child can form a long-term, trusting relationship with a teacher she knows well. Adopt a primary caregiving system in which each adult is responsible for a small number of children.

Provide responsive, consistent, and nurturing care. When you are responsive, you teach young children that their needs and preferences matter. When you are consistent, you teach young children they can trust others. When you are nurturing, you teach young children that relationships with others should feel comforting and joyful.

Promote critical thinking by creating an environment where children feel safe to explore and are comforted if they become confused or scared. "Positive control, autonomy support, and responsiveness have been most often linked to the development of strong self-regulation skills in the research literature" (McClelland & Tominey 2014, 5).

Model your ability to self-regulate. As adults, we need to exercise our own self-regulatory skills to co-regulate with the children we care for. When we find ourselves feeling overwhelmed, angry, or burned out, we need to learn healthy ways to manage these strong feelings. When we feel calm and even-keeled, we do a better job of supporting the children in our care.

THINK ABOUT IT

Reflect on your ability to regulate your own thinking and emotions. How does that ability change over the course of the day?

What might cause that ability to change?

Think about a time you noticed a baby's or toddler's cues. How did you use this as an opportunity to co-regulate?

TRY IT

Pay attention and respond to each child's individual cues, and ask parents how they observe their children communicating needs.

Talk to children during the daily routines and experiences of each day, and describe to them what you are doing and how they are responding.

List some of the strategies you use to co-regulate with the children in your care, and share them with your colleagues or supervisor.

Take the time to sensitively respond to the individual children in your care. Doing so not only makes your job fascinating and rewarding, it also contributes to children's learning the lifelong skill of self-regulation.

References

McClelland, M.M., & S.L. Tominey. 2014. The Development of Self-Regulation and Executive Function in Young Children. Washington, DC: ZERO TO THREE.
Murray, D.W., K. Rosanbalm, C. Chrisopoulos, & A. Hamoudi. 2015. Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress: Foundations for Understanding Self-Regulation From an Applied Developmental Perspective. OPRE Report #2015-21. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services.
Raby, K.L., G.I. Roisman, R.C. Fraley, & J.A. Simpson. 2015. "The Enduring Predictive Significance of Early Maternal Sensitivity: Social and Academic Competence Through Age 32 Years." Child Development 86 (3): 695-708.

Copyright © 2015 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at www.journal.naeyc.org/about/permissions.asp

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It Takes Two: The Role of Co-Regulation in Building Self-Regulation Skills

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Self-regulation is influenced by external factors like the environment and interactions with others and by internal factors such as temperament. The particular temperament children are born with impacts how easily they are able to regulate themselves. by Linda Gillespie Two-month-old Daryl cries softly as he wakes up from his nap.

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Chapter 10 Choose One (Option 2): CSEFEL What Works Briefs

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Chapter 10 Choose One (Option 2): CSEFEL What Works Briefs

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What Works Briefs: Summaries of Effective Practices for Supporting Children's Social-Emotional Development and Preventing Challenging Behaviors.

The Briefs describe practical strategies, provide references to more information about the practice, and include a one-page handout that highlights the major points of the Brief.

View Ordering Information (PDF)

Training Modules best viewed using the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Éxitos en resumen

Brief 1
Introduction to the What Works Briefs PDF | HTML

Éxito 1
Introducción a los Éxitos en resumen PDF

Brief 2
Understanding the Impact of Language Differences on Classroom Behavior by R. M. Santos, M. M. Ostrosky PDF | HTML
Handout: PDF Additional Sources: HTML

Éxito 2
La comprensión del impacto de diferencias lingüísticas en el comportamiento dentro del aula por R. M. Santos y M. M. Ostrosky PDF
Hoja: PDF

Brief 4
Helping Children Make Transitions between Activities by M. M. Ostrosky, E. Y. Jung, M. L. Hemmeter PDF | HTML
Handout: PDF Additional Sources: HTML

Éxito 5
El uso de actividades y rutinas de las aulas como oportunidades de apoyar las interacciones entre compañeros por T. Bovey y P. Strain PDF
Hoja: PDF

Brief 6
Using Environmental Strategies to Promote Positive Social Interactionsby T. Bovey, P. Strain PDF | HTML
Handout: PDF | HTML

Brief 9
What are Children Trying to Tell Us?: Assessing the Function of Their Behavior by L. Fox, M. Duda
PDF | HTML
Handout: PDF

Éxito 11
El uso de la capacitación sobre la comunicación funcional para el reemplazo de conductas problemáticas por G. Dunlap, M. Duda PDF
Hoja: PDF

Éxito 13
Inclusión: El papel del administrador del programa por B. J. Smith, P. Strain, M. M. Ostrosky PDF Hoja: PDF

Brief 14
The Role of Time-Out in a Comprehensive Approach for Addressing Challenging Behaviors of Preschool Children by G. Dunlap, L. Fox, M.L. Hemmeter, P. Strain PDF | HTML

Éxito 14
La función del tiempo de descanso como uno de los métodos para tratar los comportamientos desafiantes de niños preescolares por G. Dunlap L. Fox M. L. Hemmeter P. Strain PDF

Éxito 15
El uso de opciones y preferencias para promover un mejor comportamiento por G. Dunlap, D. Liso
PDF
Hoja: PDF

Éxito 16
Padres y figuras paternas: el papel importante en el desarrollo social y emocional de los niños por A. Quesenberry, M.M. Ostrosky, R.M. Corso PDF

Éxito 17
Estrategias para incrementar las interacciones sociales entre compañeros: la incitación y el reconocimiento por T. Bovey and P. Strain PDF Hoja: PDF

Brief 18
Logical Consequences by L. Fox and S. Langhans PDF | HTML
Handout: PDF

Éxito 21
El fomento de la alfabetización emocional: Rotular emociones por G. Joseph, P. Strain, and M. M. Ostrosky PDF
Hoja: PDF

Brief 23
Understanding Temperament in Infants and Toddlers by Lindsey T. Allard and Amy Hunter PDF | HTML Handout: PDF

Brief 24
Attachment: What Works? by Donna Wittmer
PDF | HTML
Handout: PDF

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CSEFEL: Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning

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What Works Briefs: Summaries of Effective Practices for Supporting Children's Social-Emotional Development and Preventing Challenging Behaviors. The Briefs describe practical strategies, provide references to more information about the practice, and include a one-page handout that highlights the major points of the Brief. View Ordering Information (PDF) Training Modules best viewed using the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

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Looking for fresh ideas for five senses activities to explore with your class? Then this list is the #1 place to start! Below you will find over 50 playful five senses learning ideas, sorted into categories for each of the senses - smell, touch, sight, sound and taste!

Suitable for preschool through to the early years of elementary, these five senses activities are also perfect as learning invitations or sensory play ideas for learning home or school!
But first, what is so important about learning about the five senses anyway?
From the moment a baby is born (and even before birth), they are absorbing information about world through the five senses - what they see, hear, touch, smell and taste. What adults often don't realise is how important this sensory learning continues to be - through toddlerhood and the early years of school. It has to do with brain development!

Put simply - babies are born with a brain full of neurons and learning about the world through the five senses develops pathways between these neurons. The more of one type of activity stimulating the senses that the baby (and child) experiences, the stronger the pathway becomes. The stronger the pathway, the easier it is for a child to learn more about that part of the world, not just for now but for life. Pathways which are not used often, will eventually disappear.

Let me give you an example. A baby is born into a bilingual home, one parent speaks English and the other French, and the child grows up learning both of these languages . This child has developed brain pathways which a child who only speaks English has not. Once both of these children have grown to adulthood, which will find it easier to learn a new language? The first one. For the second child, these pathways have not been reinforced so by around the age of 10 years of age, the pathway disappears. It does not mean the second child cannot learn a new language as an adult, it may just be more challenging for him to do so.

By providing babies, toddlers and young children with a wide range of experiences which involve their five senses, you develop these strong brain pathways. Pathways which will help them to learn at preschool, through formal schooling and onto adulthood, and this giant list of five senses activities is a great place to get started.

A GIANT List of 50+ Five Senses Activities

Learning About the Sense of Smell Activities

1. Scented Playdough: Scent a batch of homemade playdough. You can add vanilla, peppermint or other cooking essences, spices such as cinnamon, or even a little dissolved, instant coffee. Try our Best Ever Scented Playdough Recipe or our Lemon & Rosemary Scented Playdough. Or make one batch of playdough, separate it into four or five pieces and scent each with a different smell and make a game of guessing which scent has been used for each.

2. Which Smell is Which?: Play a simple smelling game by stretching the leg of a pair of opaque tights over the top of a plastic cup in which you have hidden a smelly surprise. Cut onion, peanut butter, coffee, vinegar, lemon and peppermint are all great smells to explore.

3. Nature's Scents: Head outdoors to collect flowers, interesting leaves, nuts and seed pods to use to create your very own colorful, nature collage. Be sure to smell and describe the scent of each item first.

4. Make Magical Potions: While you are having fun outside, why not make magical potions too!

5. Soap Crayons: Follow our instructions for making simple soap crayons.

6. Scented Rice Play: Have fun scooping and pouring with scented rice play - try our Rosemary Rice play or our festive Gingerbread Scented Rice.

7. Grow Your Own Scents: Grow a garden or small world together. Growing herbs is a great place to start as they offer a fabulous range of scents. You will also find more great suggestions in our list of playful plants for children's garden spaces.

11. Bubble Blower Painting: Try bubble blower painting. There is something quite magical about watching the bubbles burst into color!

12. Treasure Hunt in a Bottle: Create a treasure hunt in a bottle using rice, popcorn kernels, lentils or coffee beans to hide small objects from around your home. Fill a clear plastic water bottle with your preferred filling until it is about 3/4 full. Small objects you might add include a clothes peg, a key, dice, craft foam shapes or letters, a small coin, interesting buttons and tiny toys or figurines. Challenge your child to find all ten (or more!) hidden items.

For older children, make the treasure hunt trickier by using small items of one color and rice of the same color.

13. What's Missing?: Play ' What's missing? ' with a preschooler.

14. Can You Make a Square Bubble?: Set your child the challenge of making a square bubble with our fun What Can You Use to Make Bubbles? Challenge.

15. Color Mixing: Try plastic bag color mixing for a low mess exploration of color change.

16. Folded Paint Monsters: Make folded paint monsters or folded paint butterflies. A simply magical activity for preschoolers.

18. Scratch Art: Create your own scratch art drawing sheets for a colorful drawing activity.

19. Explore Emotions: Use our printable feelings and emotions cards and a mirror to explore the ways in which our faces convery different emotions. With the cards comes eight different suggestions for how to explore emotions with children. Or if you are working with toddlers or preschoolers, check out our suggestions in 9 Ways to Explore Feelings & Emotions with Toddlers and Preschoolers.

20. Calm Down Sensory Bottle: Our slow motion calm down sensory bottle is simply magical to make and watch.

21. Make Paper Pinwheel: Spinning pinwheels are truly captivating and we can show you how with our tutorial to DIY a paper pinwheel.

22. Get a Closer Look with a DIY Microscope: Have students take a closer look with their very own DIY microscope made with just four commonly found household supplies.

23. Play Detective with Fingerprint Forensics: The science of fingerprints is pretty cool and with our fingerprint forensics experiment you need to look very closely to solve the crime! A great five senses activity for elementary students.

Learning About the Sense of Touch Activities

25. Get Silly with Putty: Make your own silly putty and try one of these great play ideas - they're great for finger strengthening and co-ordination.

26. Bubble Wrap Fingerpainting: Fingerpainting on bubble wrap is lumps and bumps of fun!

27. Shredded Paper: Fill a child's paddle pool with shredded paper to dive into. Hide animal figurines or alphabet puzzle pieces amongst the paper for treasure hunt fun.

28. Treasure Basket: Make a sensory treasure basket, choosing household items representing a range of textures. Check out the suggestions in our article, Treasure Baskets & Discovery Boxes for kids of all ages.

29. Games With Touch: Have fun with these five touch games.

30. Ice Painting: Brrrr! Ice painting is super cool!

31. Funfetti Playdough: Have fun exploring funfetti playdough with colored rice.

33. Water Play: Water play has to be the ultimate in sensory play for kids! Check out these 10 cool water play ideas.

34. Get Muddy!: Mud play is next level when it comes to five senses activities! Not sure where to start? We've got you covered with fifteen mud play ideas.

35. Make and Play with Slime: Feeling brave? Try making slime with elementary aged children. You can try our recipes for Fluffy Slime or Floam Slime or frosty Snow Slime.

Learning About the Sense of Hearing Activities

37. Play a Listening Guessing Game: Pop a box between you and your child and hiding the objects, make a sound with a household item for them to guess what it is. Try crinkling a plastic cup, shaking a container of rice, scrunching up a piece of paper or playing a percussion instrument. Then check out this collection of 5 more fun listening games.

38. Play Percussion: Play simple percussion instruments together. Play fast and slow, loud and soft, make a long sound and then a short sound. Find more ideas for playing with sound in this post.

39. Dance It Out: Put on some high energy music and dance with these ideas for creative movement with preschoolers.

40. Try the Plate Dance: This super fun dance is fabulous for toddlers, preschoolers and kindergartners. Even the adults will love it!

41. Musical Hide & Seek: Play hide and seek and gently shake a bell or shaker as a clue to where you are hiding.

RELATED: For more music inspired games, check out our collection of fifteen music games.

43. Wind Chime Craft: Search your home or classroom for threading treasures and follow these instructions for making your own wind chimes.

Learning About the Sense of Taste Activities

44. Blind taste test: Host a blind taste test and you might just encourage your children to try new foods!

45. If You Have Lemons...: Taste sour lemons and then make them sweet with this fabulous recipe for homemade lemonade.

46. Cooking: Cooking with a toddler or preschooler is a great way to introduce them to a range of taste sensations. Remember to cook both savoury and sweet recipes. Start with these 10 easy things to cook with kids or 10 things to cook with toddlers.

47. Make edible art: Combine learning about taste with learning about the artist, Matisse, with this fun edible art activity.

48. Fruity Flavors: Taste wedges of a range of citrus fruits - lemon, lime, grapefruit, orange, mandarin/clementine - or melon - watermelon, honeydew melon, canteloupe. Older children can rate them according to sweetness or graph the class favorites.

50. Head Out and About: Visit a local farmer's market. Taste fruits and vegetables on offer, fresh juice, an organic bacon roll, fresh baguettes or other baked goods.

51. Jelly Bean Experiment: Does what you see in front of your effect your sense of taste? This Jelly Bean Taste Test Experiment will keep you guessing!

Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.

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A GIANT List of Playful Activities for Exploring the Five Senses

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Looking for fresh ideas for five senses activities to explore with your class? Then this list is the #1 place to start! Below you will find over 50 playful five senses learning ideas, sorted into categories for each of the senses - smell, touch, sight, sound and taste!

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Children explore their world around them using their five senses, hearing, sight, smell, taste, and...

A Pretend Play Flower Shop is an opportunity for children to take on the role...

Funnels, tubes, sifts, bottles, scoopers, spoons, bottle tops and SAND! The perfect sensory play recipe...

WHY MESSY-SENSORY PLAY IS IMPORTANT?

Messy play is important for young children, giving them endless ways to develop and learn. All types of play are essential for children's development and early learning. Play helps children to develop and improve their gross and fine motor skills, co-ordination and concentration. Also how to work cooperatively and collaboratively, use all their senses to discover and explore their environment, and develop their imagination, creative thinking and ability to problem solve and experiment with solutions.

Homemade Rubbery Goop Recipe:

Primary Colours Squishy Bag Experiment

How to Colour Rice for Sensory Play

Rice and Ice

Bucket of Colourful Spaghetti Worms

Cloud Theme Sensory Bin

Cloud Theme Sensory Bin is another activity that is part of our cloud series. The sensory bin is made up of cotton wool balls, gem stones and laminated clouds. The cotton wool balls represent the clouds and the blue gem stones represent rain. The aim of the sensory tub is to search and find the printable cloud letters and sort them into groups "C is for Cloud" and "R is for Rain". Read more...

How o make Squishy bags for Sensory Play?

T is for Tiger Tea Party Story Retell

T is for Tiger Tea Party is a story retell activity that involves bringing the story alive through sensory play. We created a sensory tub using various items that represented the characters and objects in the story The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr. We love to take a gorgeous story book and retell it in a playful and hands on way, trying to keep early literacy fun. Read more...

Digging for Dinosaur Fossils

How to make Sand Foam?

Sorting Shapes Sensory Bin

Alphabet Ice and Shaving Cream

Bottle Top and Bubble Coups

Digging for Spaghetti Worms

Homemade Edible Finger Paint

Melting Insects in Ice

Mixed Beans & Peas Sensory Tub

Homemade Cloud Dough

Shaving Cream Activity Tray

Old Mac Donald had a Farm Hide & Seek Sensory Tub

Playing with Gloopy Gloop:

Soapy Slime FUN:

Rainbow Sensory Rice Bags:

Bright, colourful, no mess and fun - sensory play with rainbow coloured rice in zip lock bags. Read more.....

Yellow Theme Balloons and Bottle Tops:

Blue Theme Sensory Tub:

Easter Theme Sensory Play Table:

Fluffy Snow:

Sensory Water Balloon Bath Fun:

Strawberry Scented Rice:

Back Yard Water Park

Rainbow Rice and Bottle Tops:

Sensory Play with Jelly:

Ooey, gooey, slushy and messy! A fun sensory experience playing with Rainbow Jelly. Read more.....

Sensory Play with Sand:

What is Hiding in Our Jelly?

Sensory Play with Buttons:

Sensory Alphabet Hunt:

Christmas Theme Sensory Table:

Bottle Tops & Bubbles:

Milk Numbers:

Children explore their world around them using their five senses, hearing, sight, smell, taste, and...

A Pretend Play Flower Shop is an opportunity for children to take on the role...

Funnels, tubes, sifts, bottles, scoopers, spoons, bottle tops and SAND! The perfect sensory play recipe...

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Recent Activities See All Sensory Activities WHY MESSY-SENSORY PLAY IS IMPORTANT? Messy play is important for young children, giving them endless ways to develop

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CDE Baby Human to Feel 1 Facial Reactions

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CDE Baby Human To Relate 2 Statistical Prob

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Soft-Wired for Growth

Upon birth, babies begin a developmental journey that will transform them from immobile infants to bipedal toddlers within 12-15 months. This crucial window is their opportunity to move in innate, prescribed ways in a sequence optimized for building neuromotor coordination. With this highly-evolved pattern, infants gain sustainable strength, coordination, and mobility that lays the foundation for their biomechanical future. Whether it's turning in the direction of a sound, reaching for an object, or talking a first step − these soft-wired neurosensorimotor sequences require no technological intervention − only free-range interaction with a flat surface in a safe environment.

*For copies of this poster, please visit our store at Building Your Baby
Marketing Claims v. Research

Nevertheless, manufacturers of infant orthotic devices (IODs) − like Bumbo Seats, exersaucers, jumpers, and walkers − have made widely-accepted claims that such devices benefit infants by "helping" them learn to sit, crawl, and walk.

Meanwhile, research has shown that these IODs alter how infants' soft-wired motor pattern development is executed. In fact, the artificial support to infants' limbs and spine has been shown to delay, alter, and potentially cause long-term motor pattern dysfunction.

Evidence Against The Use of Infant Orthotic Devices (IODs)

"...babywalkers are associated with delay in achieving normal locomotor milestones....The use of babywalkers should be discouraged."1

"usage...can delay the acquisition of independent walking and disturb the normal gait pattern in normal children so it is highly recommended stopping baby walker usage and educate parents and health professionals about its hazards."2

"A disharmonic and delayed motor development, contractures of the calf-muscles and motor development mimicking spastic diplegia are considered to be caused by the early use of infant walkers."3

"for some infants the excessive use of babywalkers alters the pathway of normal locomotor development."4

"Current data available in the literature is not enough to prohibit using baby walker[s]; however, it suggests no advantage of the walkers in child development. This issue must be noticed more by researchers..."5

Because data indicate a considerable risk of major and minor injury and even death from the use of infant walkers, and because there is no clear benefit from their use, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a ban on the manufacture and sale of mobile infant walkers.6

Evidence Supporting Motor Development from the Ground Up

"Sensory perception is a prerequisite for motor function."7

"To be able to observe their surroundings, the infant adopts the most suitable posture, activates support function in order to stabilize the entire body within gravity and then looks around."8

"It is critical that all stabilizers are proportionally activated in order to ensure good movement patterns for functional activities or skill execution. If one link (muscle or a portion of a muscle) is insufficient and/ or weak, another muscle(s) in the kinetic chain may be recruited to make up for the loss of stability or movement."9

Example A:

Above on the left, this child is experiencing a compensated spine because this pillow offers artificial stability to the developing infant, shaping the lounged child's spine into a convex "C". The head and neck are forced into flexion, altering sensory input required for instinctual motor pattern development.

Above on the right, this child's spine is in a long, neutral, and elongated position. There is no need for the child to be supported here. The child has an age-appropriate viewpoint of its surroundings and has the ability to interact with its environment.

Example B:

In another example on the left, this fixed seat creates artificial support and restricts normal, age-appropriate movement. The infant compensates with a kyphotic spine and overdevelopment of neck musculature. A child who can not sit without assistance should not be placed in a seated position.

On the right, this child is in an unsupported, free-range, age-appropriate position and is stabilizing its spine and head. Not yet ready to sit up on his own, this child can still interact with his environment in this position and does not need to be supported in an IOD.

Example C:

On the left, this child is not yet ready to stand; when placed in a vertical position at this stage, the child reacts to the abnormal stress on ankles, knees, hips, back and neck with compensatory, less stable patterns of movement.

On the right, this child has attained the ability to stand on her own: This child has appropriate positioning and motor control of feet, knees, hips, spine, neck and skull. This child did not need an IOD to help her learn to crawl, sit, stand, or walk.

Discussion

Infant orthotic devices (IODs) are designed and marketed to "help" our children move, but they may actually be limiting them. We hypothesize that a minimalistic model of infant motor pattern development maximizes an infant's biomechanical potential; the less technology we use to "help" our children move, the better and stronger they will be. Research shows that IODs (specifically walkers) can cause developmental delays, altered motor patterns, or at the very least do not help the child. Could use of these devices be playing a roll in our current pain epidemic? Could our young athletes be stronger and potentially less prone to injuries? How does the use of IODs play a role in the long term health of the individual? Further research is needed to explore the following in regards to the use of IODs during infancy:

Quality of movement patterns from infancy to adulthood

Timing of developmental milestones in infancy

Rates of injury in adulthood

Proclivity to experiencing pain in adulthood

Including more types of IODs in the research

Give your child a strong beginning − forgo IODs + facilitate free-range movement + build your baby from the ground up.

References

Garrett M, McElroy AM, Staines A. Locomotor milestones and babywalkers: cross sectional study. BMJ : British Medical Journal.

Marian Magdy Shafeek and Emam Hassan El-Negmy, 2016. Effect of Usage of Baby Walker on Acquisition and Pattern of Independent Gait in Normal Children. Trends in Medical Research, 11: 76-81.

Engelbert RH 1, et al. Influence of infant-walkers on motor development: mimicking spastic diplegia? Eur J Paediatr Neurol. 1999;3(6):273-5.

Crouchman M. The effects of babywalkers on early locomotor development. Dev Med Child Neurol. 1986 Dec;28(6):757-61.

BADIHIAN S, ADIHIAN N, YAGHINI O. The Effect of Baby Walker on Child Development: A Systematic Review. Iranian Journal of Child Neurology. 2017;11(4):1-6.

Injuries Associated With Infant Walkers, Committee on Injury and Poison Prevention, Pediatrics Sep 2001, 108 (3) 790-792; DOI: 10.1542/peds.108.3.790.

Metcalfe, J.S. et al. Development of somatosensory-motor integration: an event-related analysis of infant posture in the first year of independent walking. Dev. Psychobiol.

Kobesova, A, Kolar, P: Developmental Kinesiology: Three levels of motor control in the assessment and treatment of the motor system. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 2013

Frank C, Kobesova A, Kolar P. DYNAMIC NEUROMUSCULAR STABILIZATION & SPORTS REHABILITATION. International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy. 2013;8(1):62-73

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Building Your Baby From the Ground Up - Capital Chiropractic

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Infant orthotic devices (IODs) are designed and marketed to "help" our children move, but they may actually be limiting them. We hypothesize that a minimalistic model of infant motor pattern development maximizes an infant's biomechanical potential; the less technology we use to "help" our children move, the better and stronger they will be.

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 Principles of Effective Family Engagement - This link is for the Family Relationships Signature Assignment

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 Principles of Effective Family Engagement - This link is for the Family Relationships Signature Assignment

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Principles of Effective Family Engagement

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6 elements of effective family engagement.

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How to Stop Carrying and Start Encouraging Your Baby's Play - Use for Chapter 4:  Choose One (Option 3)

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How to Stop Carrying and Start Encouraging Your Baby's Play - Use for Chapter 4:  Choose One (Option 3)

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In this episode: A mom who's been carrying her 5-month-old on her back is now trying to get her daughter to spend time playing on her own. So far, it isn't working for either of them, and this mom is frustrated and looking for solutions. "My back would adore a break," she writes. "And I want her to be the happiest, most confident baby she can be."

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How to Stop Carrying and Start Encouraging Your Baby's Play - Janet Lansbury

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In this episode: A mom who's been carrying her 5-month-old on her back is now trying to get her daughter to spend time playing on her own. So far, it isn't working for either of them, and this mom is frustrated and looking for solutions. "My back would adore a break," she writes.