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What is the Familiar Faces Basket?
The familiar faces basket is a Montessori-based activity. The idea is for young babies to see photos of family members or people that are in their everyday lives. They enjoy looking at the photos and start recognizing the individuals.
It is a basket, bin, or box that contains pictures of faces your baby will recognize. The photos should be on strong cardstock or laminated to withstand your baby.
What Purpose Does it Serve?
This activity is designed for the baby to do independently at a young age.
You can introduce it whenever though!
It is not designed to be a quiz game. The purpose is to become more familiar with faces they know and enjoy seeing people. For example, they could enjoy viewing a parent that is away at work or grandparents they don’t get to see daily.
It isn’t meant to be overthought but rather enjoyed by your baby.
You can however take anything in your own direction. I’ll touch more on that later.
How to Create Your Own Familiar Faces Basket
You need close-up photos primarily of the face of the individuals you would like to include. You can use a printing service or DIY. I went the DIY method and requested a laminator as a birthday or Christmas gift that way I could make the pictures strong enough to withstand my baby.
I would suggest if you laminate to round the corners. They can be SHARP!
I created my images as 4 x 6 photos. Now after some time, I wish I would have created squares rather than rectangles. Squares would be easier for my child to handle and eventually learn to put back into the bin or basket.
The 4×4 is also smaller than the 4×6 overall. You should consider their hands are tiny for managing the pictures.
I would also like to note that if you have young babies in some of the pictures you may need to update them after some time. It is amazing how quickly they grow and change.
Benefits of the Familiar Faces Basket
The familiar faces basket is supposed to be a fun thing. You aren’t pushing your child to do anything in particular.
However, we have seen so many benefits of using the familiar faces basket.
I should start by saying our familiar faces extend to aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. We have quite a large amount of cards.
At this point, our daughter is nearly two so she can handle this amount. A younger baby should probably start with those who live in the home plus maybe grandparents.
You can also rotate pictures in and out to keep the number manageable.
Now to the benefits we have seen.
Our daughter has so much more confidence around family members. Family gatherings can be intimidating for young toddlers and babies. It is easy to get overwhelmed.
Family members want to approach them and it can be stressful.
When your child can easily recognize those who interact with them they will become more comfortable.
With our child being born right before the pandemic she didn’t get a ton of interaction with large groups. Covid is a great reason to help your baby get more familiar with family members they may not be seeing all of the time.
You may also have family members that live out of town. Your baby doesn’t have long-term memory yet. They may forget people between long visits. The familiar faces basket can help mitigate this.
Your baby or toddler’s feelings are more important to you than those of your family members I would guess. However, it is sweet to see your toddler say “Aunt Sarah” and see auntie’s face light up. It makes family members feel special and bonded to your child.
This is by no means necessary, just a nice benefit.
Ways to use Familiar Faces Basket
This activity should start simple. Like I said before it is about your baby enjoying looking at the faces of loved ones.
You can however turn it into activities that may not be what it was originally purposed for.
We did turn it into a bit of a game.
First, it was just looking.
Then it was looking with a parent and us naming the individual in the picture.
Next, it was the parent saying “Aunt Sarah” and our toddler pointing to her while a few photo cards were laid out.
Then it turned into our young toddler trying to say the names.
Our daughter has also found it fun to turn the pictures over to the blank side and surprise herself with who will be there when she flips the card over. Sort of like peek-a-boo.
Advanced Way to Use Familiar Faces Basket
We recently went on a large family trip and my 4-year-old niece took interest in the pictures.
We played various games with the cards.
Sorting was a big one. We sorted people into family groups, by age, gender, or even features such as who is wearing glasses.
We sorted people by age order. This was made simple with only a few cards.
We also flipped cards over after viewing them to create a simple memory-type game.
She absolutely loved all of these games we played.
Conclusion
The familiar faces basket is a simple activity to make for your child. You can update it over time and take it in whatever directions your child enjoys.
Based on the story of my niece you can see that this activity can grow with your child.
This makes it worth the small time or monetary investment to create it.
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