Where is the...? Stop and look for particular images in picture books

What to try  

• When you are looking at picture books, occasionally stop on a page and search for something you have just read about.  
• Make sure you give your toddler time to process the change from reading to looking for an object. Pause and ask your toddler if they can see, for example, the rabbit in the picture.  
• On some pages, if the picture is quite simple, you might want to spend time searching for more than one object. Take it slow and let your toddler search in their own time.  
• If your toddler is especially focused on the story, or if the picture is very busy or complicated, you might decide not to pause and search for a picture. 
• Your toddler will indicate how interested they are in looking for objects in the pictures; try and use their cues to help you determine when enough is enough and be ready to find the image with them or move on. 

Good to know 

Looking for a particular image in a larger picture requires a skill called visual scanning – the ability to scan over an area and identify individual parts (and then catagorise what is important). We use this skill in many areas of our lives, from scanning a crowd to find the person we know to scanning a page and being able to pick out one word at a time to read fluently.  

At this stage, your toddler is learning to use visual scanning in simple ways and won’t always be able to process the information they gather, especially from busy images.