Sophie has just turned 17 months old but she isn’t really talking yet. She has said lots of different words but doesn’t really use them. So I have been trying to engage in play activities with lots of talking to try to encourage her to speak. She loves playing with the dolls from her dolls house and making them jump on their bed or go for a bath so I decided to do a small world activity with her.
Sophie has been going to a gym class called Gymboree every Tuesday since she was 8 months old. We were talking about the colours of her building blocks when I showed her that one of them looked like the air log at her class. I arranged the blocks to form a trail of equipment just like they have set up at her class. I showed her how to make on of her dolls move along the trail. She then copied me and made the doll walk, jump and slide.
We then tried to build some of the other pieces of equipment that she goes on. She loved making the doll rock from side to side on the rocker.
We found a hair roller to use as a tunnel and used some Happyland animals to use as the inflatable animals that they bounce on.
They finish every class with bubble time so we had to have our own version and a sing along “Pop, pop, pop… Can you pop the bubble?”
I love that Sophie is getting big enough to join in with imaginative play even if her favourite thing is pretending to make the dolls go to the toilet!
Love that shot of her at the end, so cute! Love way to relate imaginative play to something she does too, very clever. I’m sure she will get there with the taking, our Monkey didn’t say his first word till he was 2 and now he has an amazing vocabulary and never stops taking haha! Xx
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She has played this gym game every day since!! That’s so reassuring to hear about Monkey’s speech. Thank you for sharing that with me. x
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Lovely idea to encourage imaginative play. My 18 month old isn’t really talking yet either but does love to pretend cook, pretend talk on the phone, and pretend be an aeroplane. #letkidsbekids
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Pretending to be an aeroplane sounds great! Sophie likes to ‘chat’ on the phone too. x
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Aw, what a lovely way to play. Playing with dolls is such a great way to reenact things they know or have seen and a nice way to encourage interaction.
Thanks for sharing with #LetKidsBeKids
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Thanks. It is lovey to see her reenact things – it just shows how much she takes in. Thanks for hosting.
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That’s so cute! I love that you’ve included the bubbles too. We also act out our gym class, and my kids learnt some of their first words that way by my silly commentary: ‘Up, up, up! aaand JUMP’ etc. Looks like you’re doing a great job here! #Letkidsbekids
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Thanks. We will get there with the talking. She definitely understands as she was making the dolls do the actions that I said.
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