Over the last few weeks

I have been making treasure baskets for Edie

And exploring heuristic play

As with most things

The baskets and their contents

Have been loved as much by my older children

As by Edie

We certainly all had fun

Exploring an assortment of fruits and vegetables

From the cupboard and fridge

Treasure Baskets and Heuristic Play support personal, social and emotional development

Treasure Baskets give babies and children a chance to

Enjoy the exploration of very carefully chosen objects with all their senses

They delight in exploring familiar and new objects

Often items from around the home

Including food

Heuristic play begins with a child’s natural curiosity

And the idea is to allow babies and children to play freely

Without adult direction or intervention

This kind of play is all about exploration and discovery

Using all five senses to investigate and examine

To play

In our fruit and veg treasure basket

We put a sweet potato, a parsnip

An apple and avocado

A lemon and a lime

Edie loved touching all the different textures

Feeling the rough and the smooth

The warm and the cold

Running her fingers over lumps and bumps and knobbly bits

Smelling the scents from the scored skin of the citrus fruits

Sucking the lemon

Licking the lime

I loved watching Edie exploring with all her senses

She was particularly partial to parsnip!!

She liked the shape

And the little hole in the end

That was just the right size for her finger

She enjoyed some parsnip percussion

Bashing the vegetable against the wicker basket

Going against the grain of heuristic play

I did guide Edie’s explorations a little bit

I added a mirror

It was fascinating seeing how this addition changed the way Edie played

The way she looked at the vegetables

I also added a plastic leaf tray

So that the fruits and vegetables were more spread out

And could be investigated in a different way

After the treasure basket play

The older children decided that they would like to play

We decided to cut up the vegetables to look inside

And to use them for painting and printing

We all enjoyed experimenting with colour

With shape and with pattern

We had lots of fun

And I was quite proud of the picture that I made

This was such a lovely invitation to play for Edie

The fruit and veg treasure basket lasted three days

Before we needed to cut it up and use it for something else

This was super simple to set up

And could be used in a variety of creative ways

What would you do?