Playing with a baby is a lot of fun. Babies learn from almost anything you do with them. But they usually can show you what they are interested in. I'll give you a recent example of my granddaughter, Stella, when she was about 12 months old.

She was interested in this small stuffed teddybear that had a big plastic clip on it that was meant to be used to clip onto her stroller. She kept handing it to me and I'd look at it with her and talk to her, tell her it was a teddybear, and it was so soft and we'd rub it against our faces. But she kept handing it back to me having her hand on the clip, so I undid the clip and did it up again and gave it back to her . She tried to undo it too but couldn't quite manage it and gave it back to me.

I undid it and gave it back to her. She tried it and gave it back to me. This went on for at least 10 minutes.

I tried to give her another toy but her whole interest was on this clip. This toy with the clip seemed to disappear for a while - maybe at the bottom of the toy box. But when she was about 15 months old it surfaced again and she brought it to me and we plalyed with it again and this time she was able to undo it and do it up, she kept doing it for quite a while and was delighted she could do it. My grandaughter reminded me once again, that when playing with a baby, I should often let the baby direct my attention. Another thing she likes to do with me (she's nearly two-and-a-half years old now) is draw, she gets me to draw the cat, daddy, mummy, granma and granpa, over and over again and each time I draw one of us she takes the pencil and draws what she considers is the same thing, and although it is just a squiggley line, we cknowledge that it's a picture of one of us. As the weeks go by her squiggly lines are getting to look more and more like people.

Another thing she likes to do now is make salad. She watched me tear apart a lettuce once or twice and now she sits at the table and does the same and I thank her for making the salad.

Heather Robillard is the author of http://www.baby-shower-depot.com which is a website to help you create a baby shower that everyone will love.