Simple Sensory Play: Bowls and Spoons

Infants don’t need fancy or expensive toys to learn – they need experiences. One of the easiest ways to support their development is to offer real-life objects they see you use every day. Kitchen bowls and spoons are perfect! They’re safe, make fun sounds, and give babies a chance to explore with their hands, eyes, and ears. This activity is great for tummy time, sitting babies, and even early crawlers. Use a few plastic or metal bowls of different sizes and plastic or wooden spoons. Each different material will have a different feeling and make a different sound when used together.

Things you can do an say to extend the activity:

Model banging: Gently tap the spoon on the bowl. “Listen! Tap, tap, tap.”

Name actions: “You’re holding the spoon.” “You dropped it!” “You found the big bowl.”

Offer choices: “Do you want this spoon or this spoon?” (hold close so baby can reach)

Let baby lead: If they want to mouth the spoon, okay — just be sure it’s clean and safe.

Try filling and dumping: Put a spoon in the bowl and let them pull it out.

Infants are learning so many things through this simple experience! Here are just a few:

Language development: You’re giving words to everyday objects — bowl, spoon, big, loud, in, out. Repetition builds vocabulary.

Fine motor skills: Grasping a spoon, transferring hand-to-hand, reaching into a bowl.

Cognitive skills: Cause and effect (when I hit it, it makes a sound!), object permanence (it’s in the bowl! now it’s gone!), early problem-solving.

Sensory exploration: Different sounds (metal vs. plastic), textures, weights.

Social-emotional: Shared attention with a caregiver — “We’re playing together.”