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laminated head shots are great. I tie them onto the fire guard at bubs eye level and stick them in the cots/ over the bed. I refer to them through the day and we say 'night-night ' to them at bedtime. its a little creepy for the parents when they turn up to see themselves plastered all around but the bubs usually love it. I remember little munchkin, my first foster bubs, who went home aged 15 months. on the day mum and dad arrived she looked at them a little puzzled, then you could see the cogs turning and she looked at the photos on the fireguard and signed 'mummy' and 'daddy'. its was a really sweet moment and made mummy cry! definitely do the laminated head shots and the rest, choice is always good.

This is my first post on this forum. My husband and I are adopting a 17month old baby and like you would like some recommendations on this too.

There are lots of posts about this in the "approved prospective adopters" pages (mine included as I am linked and planning books etc!)

Hi ThereWe had really good feedback about ours and we found that the pack we sent really helped in making our little ones connect with us.The fabulous foster carer should take most of the credit but she said the material we provided really helped.This is a list of our parcel:1. a tomy talking album each, which used their name and talked about 'this is your garden, can you see the slide' and 'here is xxx the dog - hasn't she got floppy ears' and then pictures of things we like to do - each with their toys somewhere int he photo - so 'daddy likes to mend things in his shed - can you see your ballerina doll?'2. about 12 large (6 x8 laminated photos) They were of us and the dogs - and they each had facts written on the back - this is xx she is 4 years old, she likes chasing a ball 3. a toy for each of them from us4. a toy dog for each of them -but that was more because we'd got a SW who was worried about dogs bonding with children5. A video. This we made on an iphone and was basically a tour of the main rooms of the house - started at the garden gate - here's your garden, look here's the slide that we have for you - here is the grass we play on etc. Then this is the lounge where we snuggle and watch tv and here is the dining room where we eat our breakfast - then their bedroom and the bathroom. We cringe when we watch it as we sound a bit Mr Tumble but the SWs said it was invaluable and that they would be asking everyone to do it (if you're really camera shy you could just narrate, but I'm convinced they were comfortable with us so quickly because they had a moving image of us - and I wore the same top to the first day of intros).hope that's helpful good luck with it - at 6 weeks into placement I can say its magical and yours are similar ages to ours - ours are just under two and three - and snoring upstairs (this time yesterday I was in full battle to get them to settle but today daddy's home so they did it like angels!).C

Hi,We did the talking photo book picture of me outside our house saying Mummy can't wait to meet you, picture of husband sat on sofa in lounge with a teddy saying daddy can't wait to meet you, garden photo us having a picnic with teddy saying we love having fun in the garden etc We then gave teddy to our little girl when she meet us she recognised it from the photos.We also did a dvd as she was a baby that liked music and only 15mths old at the time we sang songs on it in different rooms of the house. Very embarrassing as neither of us can sing but foster carers and our daughter loved it! You can buy recordable books on amazon we did this for our little girl so she could get to know our voice she still loves it and she's nearly 3 now

Hi,We did the talking photo book picture of me outside our house saying Mummy can't wait to meet you, picture of husband sat on sofa in lounge with a teddy saying daddy can't wait to meet you, garden photo us having a picnic with teddy saying we love having fun in the garden etc We then gave teddy to our little girl when she meet us she recognised it from the photos.We also did a dvd as she was a baby that liked music and only 15mths old at the time we sang songs on it in different rooms of the house. Very embarrassing as neither of us can sing but foster carers and our daughter loved it! You can buy recordable books on amazon we did this for our little girl so she could get to know our voice she still loves it and she's nearly 3 now

We got pretty good feedback from ours too, so much so that our SWs asked for a copy to use as an example/template for other adopters!! We did a laminated A4 book of photographs, and as we knew that she liked Tinker Bell we bought a doll, had a picture of her on the first page and then Tinker Bell led the way through the house starting at the front door and going through the rooms - pics of the doll on the sofa, at the table, on the stairs etc - with bits of text saying "can you see...?" "this can be your place at the table" and other stuff like that.We had a picture of us at the end waving and saying we couldn't wait to see her.The video was made by our SW and was just a quick guide through the rooms.She really liked both and sometimes still looks at the book.