Activities That Explore Vision for 0-2 Year Olds

Use the following activities to help your little ones explore their sense of vision.

By Michelle Anthony, PhD

Ages

Infant-2

Activities That Explore Vision for 0-2 Year Olds

Senses: Children under the age of three explore and learn through their senses. To support development across all areas, use the following activities to engage and excite your baby or toddler. 

  • I Spy: This book series is visually rich with wonderful objects to seek and find – building great observation skills! Play in the pages of the book or online.
  • DIY Light Table: Turn a translucent plastic bin upside down and attach holiday lights on the underside. Have fun exploring light qualities of different objects in your home — beads, tissue paper, different colored drinking glasses — objects that will allow light through.  
  • Wonder Bottles: Stimulate your baby's senses with this toy you can make yourself.
  • Put Colored Ice Cubes in a warm bathtub or sink with warm water: Talk about hot and cold, observe what happens to the ice cubes, and observe how the colors mix.
  • Color Mixing: In an ice cube tray, put a small bit of water and a drop of food coloring in each cube, varying the colors. Leave some cubes empty for “new colors” your child makes. Help your child use a medicine dropper or plastic syringe (no needle) to discover the colors! Learning to squeeze the water up, hold it in the dropper and squeeze it (slowly) to release. Then show them how to drop more than one color drop into the empty cubes. Ask them what they see? Extensions:
    • Once your child gets good at it, have her drip the colored water onto cotton facial pads,  cotton balls or paper towel to discover color mixing in a new way — while also developing fine motor skills.
    • Drip water onto a paper towel or coffee filter. Pinch in the middle with a clothespin and hang up your child’s “butterfly” in the window. Or make a mobile for the kitchen.
Creativity
Sorting and Classifying
Observation
Activities
Experimentation
Age 1
Infant
Age 2
Five Senses
Colors