5 Best Types of Play for Toddlers

What are the best types of toddler play?

As a Mom, we ask ourselves, are we introducing our toddler to the best type of play? It all depends on the stage of development. The skills that they can do at the moment are the biggest clue to choosing the best activities. For instance, a 12-month old child is exploring cause-and-effect, you can try to blow bubbles and then pop it, hide-and-seek under the tables and chairs, and dropping a ball from the table then pick it up again.

Here are the best 5 types of play your child can be most interested in at different stages:

1. Object Play. Experimenting with things fascinates toddlers by touching, mouthing, pushing, rolling, banging, and throwing. While doing these, you may want to say the name of the things that they are holding, to increase their vocabularies.

2. Early Symbolic Play. This type of play is common at the age of 2. Your child might play with a blanket and pretend it is a magic cape or a gown, or playing with a huge box as if it was a car to ride on.

3. Social Play. This is very essential. Interacting with you and others is important especially throughtout the first year, Infants like to smile, and laugh. Older babies likes to play peek-a-boo and itsy bitsy spider.

4. Functional and Representational Play. Playing with familiar objects in an appropriate way. Like using a toy hairbrush to brush Mommy's hair or a toy vacuum cleaner to clean the carpet.

5. Role Play. Our toddlers are now actors. They will begin to take new roles. They pretend to be a doctor, a teacher, and a driver. Being a mommy is common now.

Source: Baby Toddler