We're going shopping – let's make a queue!

What you need 

• Small toy figures, animals or vehicles 

What to do 

• When you and your toddler are playing with toy people (or animals), make up a story about going shopping.  
• Use your toddler’s favourite type of shop to keep them engaged.  
• Make a pretend till area and stand one toy in front of the till, and one behind.  
• Say to your toddler, “Oh look, that person is buying something, they’re in the queue.”  
• Then find another person and stand them behind the person in the queue. 
• Repeat this until there are a few people lined up.  
• Set up another till and pop a toy behind the till. Repeat what you did before.  
• When your toddler has seen this happen a few times, they might start to add people to a queue, too.  
• If your toddler loses interest in creating queues, you can capture their attention again by pretending that one person has finished at the till.  
• The first person in the queue can be moved away and all the others moved forwards. Your toddler might have ideas to keep the game going with different queues; let them lead the adventure if they want to! 

Good to know 

Adapt the game to what your toddler’s interested in – it could be cars in a traffic jam, elephants getting a drink, boats sailing in the sea – anything at all.