Playsaurus · No. 51 · 6-20 months
Fill a basket with ordinary household objects and let them investigate, with you alongside rather than directing.
Put six or seven ordinary things in a shallow basket: a metal spoon, a wooden spoon, a small tin, a scarf, a hairbrush, a toilet roll tube. Sit them on the floor with it in reach and then do very little. Let them pick things up, mouth them, drop them, and pick them up again. Your job is to be near, to look where they look, and to name what they have found when they look up at you.
The first few minutes look unimpressive. They pick one thing up, turn it over, drop it. That dropping is the point rather than a failure of the game, because they are finding out what each thing does. Swapping two or three objects every week keeps it going for months.
If they lose interest quickly, there are probably too many things in the basket. Take it down to three. If they only want one object, let them have it for as long as they want it.
Nothing smaller than a toilet roll tube, because anything that fits through one can be swallowed. No batteries, no cracked plastic, no long cords or ribbons. Stay in the room.
City of York Council, Treasure Baskets. The whole video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OngRqlhXS5A&t=0s