Imagining and creating: babies

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What to expect

Your baby is likely to:

• have a natural curiosity about his environment and be keen to explore (from four months)
• enjoy messy play (from eight months)
• look at pictures and try to imitate your animal sounds (from seven months)
• enjoy making noise by banging things together or vocalising (from eight months)
• enjoy exploring cupboards, under beds and throughout the house (from about 10 months)
• copy actions and words to songs (from 12 months)
• enjoy toys that stimulate open-ended play (from 12 months)
• enjoy make-believe play – talking on the phone like mummy or wearing a pirate’s costume (from about 15 months).

From about five months your baby will love looking at himself in the mirror and watching his expressions change. Eventually your baby will begin to realise that he's the baby in the mirror.

Between about 8-18 months your infant will delight in creating his own fun. He may turn a carrot into a rocket or your jumper into a turban. By 15 months he will enjoy make-believe play: mimicking your phone conversations and exploring pretend play by ‘helping’ with the washing up or playing daddy to his toys.

His natural curiosity will spur him to potter and ponder anywhere and everywhere. Your peg bucket may become fascinating, and picking the petals off daisies might keep him entranced for long minutes.

Just ‘messing about’ helps baby to explore his natural creativity and imagination. All he needs is space, time and whatever safe materials are at hand.

Play ideas to encourage imagining and creating

• Telling stories and reading books.
• Going for a walk. A walk in the park, at the beach, on a farm or in any different environment adds to the store of information your child builds about the world and helps fire his imagination.
• Reciting nursery rhymes.
• Playing dress-ups with old clothes, handbags and hats; great fun for a child from about 12 months on.
• Giving him stuff he can use for messy play – sand, water, mud, clay, playdough or paints.
• Playing with water play (from 12 months) – a bucket of water with bubbles and a few plastic cups are all he needs. It’s important that he is always supervised around water.
• Playing outdoors, which gives him freedom and a new environment to explore.
• Scribbling on paper (or whatever else he can get his hands on) with a crayon.
• Listening to music – or making his own with a toy xylophone, some bells, saucepan lids for cymbals, and a jar full of rice or dried peas for a shaker.
• Playing with toys (such as blocks) that can be turned into whatever he wants, allowing open-ended play.
• Playing at being an adult, from about 15 months. He'll love props such as old clothes and hats, a telephone, pots and pans, brooms, and brushes and shovels.
• Trying out the equipment at the playground. He might also enjoy playing around kids of a similar age, even if they don't really play together until they're older.
• Exploring water at bath time – pouring water from one container to another, seeing what happens when a boat is filled with water, and best of all, splashing water. A few simple steps keep bath time fun and happy.

Try to offer him materials that he can create games with, rather than toys that come complete from the shop with their own structured play expectations. For instance, blocks are ideal for open-ended play as they can become anything, but a toy car is reasonably limited in what it can become. A teddy is a teddy, but a box of different coloured pieces of material has endless possibilities.

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