The Baby Club’s Nigel Clarke encourages parents and carers to explore potatoes with babies.
Nigel explains why playing with potatoes can be great fun and help boost your baby’s language development in the video below.
Vegetables, like potatoes or carrots, can be great for playtime and are good preparation for when your baby starts eating and handling food.
Help your baby touch the potato. They all look and feel different - different shapes and sizes.
They can be rough or smooth or slippery when peeled. Lots of new experiences for your baby.
- You've got different potatoes. Haven't you?
Talk to your baby while you play and say the word "potato". Your baby's brain is making connections between words and objects.
Potato printing is great way for you and baby to get creative!
Play together and encourage them to lead - your baby will make their own decisions.
Just be prepared - it can get messy!
Fun and games with a potato
Potatoes are really interesting textures to babies, making them great for sensory play. They're all different too - some are 'smooth', some are 'rough', some are 'bumpy', some are 'round'.
These are all new words and ideas for your baby. So let them hold and feel the potatoes as you name each of these textures.
You could have a go at potato printing together:
- Cut your potato in half
- Carve an interesting shape into the cut side of the potato, it could be a star, a triangle… whatever you like!
- Dollop some child friendly paint on a plate or piece of cardboard
- Dip the cut edge into the paint and then let your baby use this to stamp your shape on to a piece of paper - as you do, make sure you name the shape 'you've made a star!' and offer plenty of encouragement
Sensory play and messy play activities from The Baby Club
As well as playing with potatoes, there are lots of ideas for sensory play from The Baby Club:
- You could try playing with porridge oats
- Or making some twirly ribbons
- Or exploring paintbrushes and paint with baby
Check out our article on why sensory play is so great for babies.
