Welcome to the My First Five Years Blog. Here you will find all sorts of information, ideas and activities that will help you to support your child.
For many of us what we want after, or before, a hard day is a hug. Touch helps us to build relationships and to regulate our emotions. Your newborn baby has been aware of touch since around the 8th week of your pregnancy and will have felt their hands touching their face and mouth before they were born. Touch is one of the first ways in which your child learns about themselves and about the world. They use their mouth and then, as their physical skills develop, their hands, feet and body to explore and learn. In this blog, we are going to look at the role of touch in helping your newborn baby regulate their emotions and learn about the world.
Going outside with your baby or child gives them the chance to explore the world in a different way, they can move more, notice changes in weather and see, hear and touch things that they won’t find inside. Playing on a hill provides a particular challenge and a unique set of experiences, in this blog we will focus on the opportunities presented for supporting sensory development.
I thought it might be helpful to start this investigation into the importance of nursery rhymes by answering the question ‘What is a nursery rhyme?’