Early play in infants tends to be solitary or takes place alongside other children. Young children learn how to interact with other children through play but they can also explore and learn independently. The initial play experience for infants is when they begin to explore through moving and acting upon the world. Many toys offer infants the opportunity to learn more about their world. Young children will sometimes act out some aspect of their lives e.g. going to the shops and then they involve their toys in these activities. These young children are playing independently but they are also reinforcing their understanding of the social world by acting out scenarios. In the first year of life infants are exposed to a spoken language but it is rare for them to be able to produce words. Baby sign language helps during this formative period where Infants understand certain words but cannot produce them verbally. Infants use symbolic language when they gesture and can even use a sign to mean a word. There is a gap between how many words babies understand and how many words that they can say. During the second year toddlers begin to produce words and are building their vocabulary; they can be using around 50 words by the middle of their second year. By the time a child is 6 years old they will have an extensive vocabulary of around 10.000 words. They achieve this large vocabulary through practice, repetition and by storing the words in their long term memory. Children learn about 5 new words a day and games and toys can help expand their vocabulary. As babies develop they begin to use mental pictures of objects that are no longer within their field of vision. These memory skills can be enhanced through presenting visual stimuli more than once; repetition is essential for the development of memory skills. Young infants’ memories are influenced by context; for instance, they can imitate an adult’s actions with a toy but only if the toy is identical in colour and features to the one that the adult played with. Older infants can remember, for instance, how to press a toy animal to make a sound even if the toy is slightly different to the one which the adult used to demonstrate. Infants’ memories become less context dependent at the same time that infants start to crawl and walk. Giving babies plenty of opportunity to explore their world allows them to enhance their memory skills. Babies are sensitive to sound patterns early in life and respond emotionally to voices. Even before they are born infants detect and monitor sound to a certain extent. During the second half of their first year babies are particularly sensitive to differences in beat and rhythm. Music is a complex form of auditory stimulation that is linked to human movement. Infants are drawn to music and are very good at being able to discern different musical structures. In a recent survey we found that parents often choose a particular traditional nursery, for example twinkle, twinkle little star, because of the gestures linked to the song. Babies love music and nursery rhymes that have plenty of repetition and gestures.