Baby Play – Food play 1

This if the 3rd post in our Baby Play series – see our Making Music and Block Play for the previous 2 posts.

This time T’s play involves development of fine motor skills – fine motor skills are important for development of mark making and in the future writing skills. Like everything in babies these skills don’t just develop how babies play and what interests them leads them towards the end goals of writing confidently in the future but each step is milestone in the development process and the pincer grip is one of the first stages in this pathway.

What you need

Small cereal
A couple of plastic/none breakable contains

How the fun happens

Whilst J and I craft T likes to be involved but this isn’t always possible – so often I will sit her in the high chair so she feels part of our crafting with some activity on her tray chair (the same would be possible sitting her at the table in the booster seat or on the floor infront of me). This time I decided to give her some edible fun in the form of rice krispies.

Baby developing fine motor skills with food play
T inspecting the rice krispies

I put a couple of hand fulls of rice krispies into a plastic tub and demonstrated to T how to move the krispies from one tub to the other picking up as few as possible each time. At first T tipped all of the Krispies into the other bowl and then onto her tray, but once she had had fun transferring them in large quantities she became interested in individual krispies and I watched as the amount that she transfered became less and less.

Baby using pincer grip to move krispies from one container to another
T's pincer grip is getting more accurate the more she plays

We have returned to this activity a few times as she also loves to nibble on the krispies and as we have played with them more and more her pincer grip has improved – the above picture shows how she has refined it and is moving them as individual krispies…. Of course after she has moved a few most then get thrown onto the high chair tray and after that swished from side to side and pushed onto the floor with calls of GEMMA the dog to come and eat.

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

9 Comments

  1. A great tool to improve dexterity and co-ordination! Great fun.

    Thanks for linking to science sparks Fun Sparks!

    1. Thank you πŸ˜€ She’s loving picking up the smallest pieces of everything possible – J stuck a star to the floor this morning and she spent ages trying to pick it up

  2. T is getting real control with that pincer grip. She looks like she’s having fun.

  3. I should let Lily have a go with at this with dry pasta, which would be easier to re-use (we have no dog to clean up).

  4. Oh I wish I had a dog to clean up the mess, cats don’t clean anything up!! Love the photo of your daughter inspecting her rice krispies.

    1. Thank you πŸ˜€ The dog loves having kids tolerates most things as she’s aware where her next snack will come from.

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