A little bit of this and a little bit of that – encourage curiosity in this exploratory activity

What you need 

• A variety of containers, including cardboard tubes, yoghurt pots, and cupcake or ice cube trays  

What to do 

• Put some small objects in a bowl. Items like small building blocks, pom poms, tissues, corks, large bottle lids, or chunky threading beads work well – making sure anything you choose is appropriate for your toddler to handle.  
• Ask your toddler to transfer everything in the bowl into the containers.  
• Let them decide what goes where. They may find it won’t fit at first, but they can decide how they want to change their plan when that happens.  
• Once everything is in the containers, challenge your toddler to swap it around, or even put things back into the bowl. 

Always supervise this activity closely. If your toddler is still exploring the world by putting objects in their mouth, make sure to use large safe, items (perhaps with bigger containers to fit into) for this activity for now. 

Good to know 

This is a great way to work on a whole range of skills, including grasping abilities, building fine motor strength, encouraging a pincer grasp, improving hand-eye coordination and cognitive development.