A brief six months makes a marked difference to your toddler’s ability to concentrate, to remember, and to use her hands. All these things add up to a toddler whose play is more involved, more detailed and lasts longer than before.

Your child may love to play with a doll’s house, because now she is able to stand the figures up, steadying them with her free hand, and invent things for them to do. Or she may be equally fascinated by cars or model dinosaurs, for the same reason.

Toddlers often become obsessed by one particular sort of toy, spending hours each day with their toy farm or their cooking set, endlessly elaborating their games. This new attention to detail is also reflected in the way your toddler looks at books or photographs – picking out the tiniest detail. Now she may enjoy books that have something to find on each page. ‘Every night for the past week we’ve read the Apple Tree Farm book where there’s a little yellow duck to find on each page.

Imaginative drawing

Drawing and painting become easier now because your toddler has learnt how to hold the paper steady with one hand while drawing with the other. Each hand can now have a different job, rather than acting in unison because her hands can now operate on their own. And this frees her to think her wonderful thoughts about what she is drawing today.

Quiet play

If you have a very active toddler, who is most happy running around the garden in large circles or climbing on the furniture, you may want to find ways of encouraging ‘quiet play’. Games with natural materials are good for calming a child and encouraging concentration.

Water

If you’re working in the kitchen, put your toddler in an apron and wellies and stand him on a sturdy chair next to the sink. Put lots of newspaper on the floor and fill the sink with warm water. Give him old plastic bottles or a colander to play with. Plastic tubing and funnels (as used for making home-made beer) are good fun, too, and if he seems to be getting bored, a squeeze of washing-up liquid or a little powder paint to colour the water will start the interest all over again. (Keep the water warm.)

Playdough

The simplest way to make playdough is to measure out equal amounts of flour and salt (8oz/225g of each is fine) and slowly add water, mixing as you pour, to make a stiff but pliable dough. You can add food colouring to the water, to colour the dough, or mix powder paint with the flour. Making the dough is fun in itself, but your toddler will also enjoy squeezing it through his fingers, rolling it into a ball and then trying to ‘make snakes’ by rolling the ball on a flat surface. A rolling pin and pastry cutters are useful and so is a patty-tin, or an empty egg box. He can put a playdough cake into each section and decorate with dried beans or raisins. He can also squeeze the dough through a garlic press and watch it come out as ‘worms’.

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Tags: child development., training toddler's concentration
Posted in Blog