What is in the bag?

2–3 years · Language · 10 minutes

What you need

How to do it

Put one familiar object in a bag without your child seeing. Let them reach in and feel it without looking.

Ask what it feels like before asking what it is. Offer words if they stall: soft, cold, bumpy, long.

Let them guess, then pull it out together and compare. Swap roles for the last round and let them choose the object to hide from you.

Why it works

Describing before naming forces the child past their first noun into adjectives, the part of vocabulary that everyday talk under-supplies. Touch without sight removes the shortcut of recognising the object visually and saying its name.