Dear Reader,
When we were talking about what activities to do this week, we noticed a common thread occurring. We both picked out activities that had to do with feelings. Maybe it’s the change of season, or maybe it’s just part of growing up, but it sounded like a good time to talk about feelings. And when we got to talking, we decided that it wasn’t something exclusively for preschoolers. Even newly-christened-toddlers are learning emotions in full force!
But my littles can’t handle some big grand activity on emotions, it’s all so new and undiscovered territory; However, they can definitely mirror your expressions and try copying your face. So, we just did that on purpose for an activity. That’s a lot of what this whole experiment is about – doing things with intention.
Really, it’s super easy and you’re probably already doing some form of this activity with your babe. I have found it easiest to either turn the camera around on my phone so you can set baby in your lap, or do the same but with a good old fashioned mirror. Letting baby see your face and theirs at the same time. You can just make faces across the dinner table, or even from any place your kid can make eye contact. It just ends up more fun when you can snuggle and when they can see themselves. Note: babies love seeing themselves!
Anyway, the post is short and sweet, but it is definitely fun to make faces on purpose. Try smiling and pulling silly faces and winking (don’t expect them to even come close on that one, haha). Definitely stick with happier emotions if your kids are still little like me, because they don’t understand the difference between pretend sad and real sad.
Since this is a fairly common practice even subconsciously, I’d love some feedback if anyone has actually thought about playing monkey see expressions with their kids!
