Activities for children from 15 to 25 months

These activities are designed to help the development of your child aged 15-25 months, and align with stage 3 of the Developmental Journal Babies Visual Impairment (DJVI).

Safety first

Learning to do more with my fingers and hands

What you'll need

Different size toys, containers, pegboard, finger puppets

Activity

It’s important that your child explores different sized shapes using a pincer grip (thumb and finger). Support your child to take objects out of containers, packets, boxes and tubs, to increase fine motor control.

Developing the pincer grip can be supported through the following activities:

• Encourage your child to open a screw-type container and remove suitably safe sized objects.
• Using hand and finger puppets.
• Increase fine motor activities by making items smaller and harder to grip. For example, picking up counters, cubes, beads, coins, and small food items like when eating from a box of raisins.
• Ask your child to pick up smaller objects using the pincer grip. For example, playing with a pegboard.
• Put toys in a bag or box and ask your child to pull them out.
• Introduce complex toys which require pressing, turning, and pulling motions.

Sounds around me

What you'll need

No extra resources needed.

Tips

It’s important to help your child to understand the sounds around them, both indoors and out. Some noises may direct your child towards a favourite toy or indicate a certain daily routine. For example, water running in the bath may let your child know it’s the start of their bedtime routine.

Activity

Tell your child about key noises inside and outside the home. If the noise is in a different room, ask them to listen carefully and tell them the noise.

Some noises can be quite startling (for example, hairdryers and hoovers), so introducing these from a distance may be better.'Listen can you hear...?'

• Washing
• Machine
• Hoover
• Bath running
• Hairdryer

By listening to noises in different rooms, your child will start to associate loudness with distance. They may begin to realise the closer they get to the source of a sound that loudness increases.

When playing outdoors, encourage your child to listen for different sounds and again label these for your child to explain what the noises and sounds related to. For example, listen for the birds, different traffic noise, the pedestrian crossing or a cyclist ringing a bicycle bell.

As your child grows and develops and begins to name noises, you could record a range of noises on your mobile phone and play them back as part of a game. See how many your child can identify.

Making a sensory story

What you'll need

Books with textured pages, toys and objects from each story

Tips

Use the Guiding Hands approach, try placing your hands on your child’s upper arms, elbows, lower arms, or wrists to guide them to any item you would like them to touch. Once you’ve located the item together, maintain gentle contact to show them that you’re there. For support, try placing your hands under your child’s hand while you touch the texture together.

Talk about your shared experience; making this a calm but fun activity! By exploring new textures in this way, your child can stop and pull their hand away if they’re not comfortable. Re-introduce the texture again next time you play. Remember, it takes many opportunities to become familiar and comfortable with new textures, tastes and situations.

Find out more details on the Guiding Hands approach.

Activity

• Explore a range of sensory books together using hand-under-hand and guiding hands techniques as you introduce new textures.
• Use toys and real objects to support your child’s understanding of the story. For example, if the story is about a donkey, find a toy donkey and explore its legs, ears and nose as you read the book together.
• Using stories such as The Hungry Caterpillar can provide opportunities to introduce your child to new tastes and smells. For example, explore new fruits as you progress through the story. Talk about the foods you’re sharing and make this an enjoyable experience for you both to share in.

Making a treasure basket

What you'll need

A tray or basket, everyday objects such as a hairbrush, cutlery, sponges, cups, wooden spoons, soft toys, musical toys, bells.

Clean outdoor items such as acorns, leaves, pebbles.

Tips

• Treasure baskets can be filled with everyday objects which your child will become familiar with. It’s a fun simple way to allow your child to explore textures, experiment and make choices at their own pace. Playing these types of games with your child may encourage your child to scan the basket, or to use their hands when searching for items.
• Providing your child with opportunities to touch and explore items can aid their understanding of concepts (for example, colours and size) within their environment.
• In your treasure basket, you can add items that make a noise (such as a ball with a bell in it), something that has a nice smell or items of different textures, so that your child uses all their senses. 

Activity

• Encourage your child to use all of their senses to find items in the treasure basket. Provide verbal clues and prompts to promote your child’s exploration. For example, ‘Find something that makes a noise.’, ‘Find something that smells nice.’, ‘Find something that is rough.’, ‘Find something you can eat.’,  ‘Find something you can smell.’
• Name each object as your child plays with it. Talk about how it feels and explore it together. If it’s a soft object, like a sponge, let your child feel the texture with their hands or use soft strokes along their arms and cheeks. 
• If your child has limited mobility, ensure they’re seated in the best position to be able to focus and engage. 
• Find matching textures: you could include two sets of matching materials. Place one set into a bag, encourage your child to reach into the bag to select an object and then match it to one in the basket. Or take photos of your objects and ask your child to find the object in the photo. 
• Remember to give your child increased time to process the information.