Receptive language, Expressive language
A young infant looks at and communicates with a caregiver about pictures of infants and adults in your room.
Be Prepared: As previewed in Block 18, the current activity plan uses pictures of current infants and caregivers engaged in activities in your room. You may wish to affix each picture to a loose piece of card stock that is laminated. This arrangement enables infants to hold and look at a single picture, and individual pictures can be displayed on a wall. Other possibilities include assembling the laminated pages of pictures into a book or using a sturdy photo album that older infants can manage.
[Sit with the young infant reclined in your lap. Support the infant’s head in the bend of your arm. This will allow for your hands to hold pictures while also securely holding the infant.]
We can look at some pictures of people in our room. There are pictures of babies and pictures of adults in our room.
[Hold each picture, or the book of pictures, about 12 inches from the infant.
Describe each picture. Point to aspects you describe. Example: “Look at this baby! This is your friend, Brianna. Brianna is smiling! She is holding a doll baby!”
Spend more time on pictures that seem to be of particular interest to the infant. Example: “This is a picture of you! This is Samuel! You are looking at a book with Miss Jessica. Miss Jessica is reading your favorite book about the animals.”
Acknowledge gestures and/or vocalizations. Example: “You made a happy sound, Simran! I think you like this picture of your friends playing outside.”
Gently end the activity when the infant loses interest or you exhaust available pictures.]
[Describe what happened. Example: “We looked at pictures of people in our room. You smiled when you saw a picture of Miss Jenny. Look, here is Miss Jenny right across our room!”]
Receptive language, Expressive language
An older infant holds, looks at, and communicates with a caregiver about pictures of infants and adults in your room.
Invite an infant to sit with you to look at pictures of people in our room. The infant may wish to sit on your lap, next to you, or stand close to you. Invite the infant to hold the individual pictures or manage the book pages as you talk about each picture.
Explain that the pictures show people we know. Point to and describe infants and caregivers shown in a picture. Describe what they are doing. Example: “Look at this baby. This is your friend, Christian. Christian is playing with a ball.”
Spend more time on pictures that seem to be of particular interest to the infant. “You are touching Isabella’s eyes in this picture. You have eyes, too! Where are your eyes?”
Invite the infant to point to objects or people that you name.
Ask what is happening in a picture you anticipate will be familiar to the infant. Example: “This is a picture of you! What are you doing?” Acknowledge and expand upon any utterance. Example: “Juice. You are drinking juice in this picture. It is snack time.”
Help the infant connect pictured actions to his/her own experiences. Example: “Jeremiah is crawling in this picture! He is crawling to get his favorite toy. You used to crawl. Then you learned to walk! Now you walk to get your favorite toys!”
Conclude the activity when the infant loses interest or there are no more pictures to look at. Recognize the infant’s participation and interests in the picture sharing.
The activity options promote vocabulary awareness with pictures that will be of interest to many infants. Younger infants may not show awareness of some people shown in the pictures, especially other infants. Avoid letting the picture-sharing activity become a test of who the infant knows! Also, some infants may not be included in your photo collection due to picture consent provisions. Focus on what people are doing in the pictures, especially routine or common activities that may be familiar to infants. Infants cannot be expected to remember a particular event. Infants often see and experience your room differently than adults.
Extra support
Enrichment
Materials Needed: action pictures from your room
Place the collection of pictures in an accessible part of your room. If the pictures are laminated on individual card stock, display the pictures on a wall where infants can easily see them. Talk with infants about what is shown in the pictures. Infants will enjoy repeated descriptions of pictures of familiar people and activities.
Materials Needed: action pictures from your setting (see below)
Expand the collection of pictures of infants to include all children in your setting with appropriate consents, and encourage older children to describe for others what is happening in a picture. Focus on pictures of children engaged in familiar activities in your setting. Older children also may welcome an opportunity to show and talk with a family member about a picture(s) at drop-off or pickup time.
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