Wooden spoons
This everyday utensil, with its natural textures, patterns and shapes has plenty of play potential.
- The long handle of a wooden spoon provides a good surface to grip. Younger babies may find it quite challenging to coordinate their fingers around the slim handle and may opt to hold on to the cupped end. If your baby hasn’t mastered picking up objects yet, try putting it in their hand so they can use their grasp reflex to hold it tight. For older babies the wooden spoon offers a great opportunity to improve hand-eye coordination and dexterity.
- Your baby can make a satisfying noise with a wooden spoon. Let your baby bang two spoons together or put out some pots and pans.
- Make a wooden spoon puppet. Tie a cloth on for a skirt and draw on a happy face on one side and sad face on the other. Our bamboo spoons are perfect for this.
- Talk about different sized wooden spoons and point out how one is longer and one is shorter. Is one spoon also wider and one narrow and thin? Describing spoons introduces your baby to mathematical concepts.