Newborn babies are highly sensitive to their surroundings. They take in everything that they see or hear, incorporating it all into a complete image by synthesizing sensory information into coherent forms.
Introduce high contrast images like black and white shapes during tummy time or reading time, or explore various textures on fabric safely under supervision.
Sight
Sight is essential to visual sensory development in babies and toddlers. They use their eyes to explore the world around them by gazing upon toys, hanging mobiles or your family photos – this helps their brain sync up eye movement skills essential for future learning abilities.
By their first birthday, infants will have learned to consistently focus their eyes together and track moving objects with both eyes. They may have also begun to recognize and discriminate between colors. Toys that light up or make sounds are great ways to engage your infant’s senses; reaching for them and touching objects leads to cause-and-effect ‘eyes-to-eyes’ play that engages both eyes.
Sensory engagement helps your baby learn about their environment, including different shades and contrasts in the world around them. It provides an essential basis for future cognitive growth.
Your unborn baby will have experienced tactile and vestibular sensations during their time inside you womb, such as their mother walking or laughing, their heartbeat and uterine contractions, hearing various sounds including their mother’s voice or high-pitched tones; auditory processing development occurs more slowly. Some children will respond to stimuli with fearful avoidance (sensory defensive), while others may overreact, such as becoming distressed by bright lights or loud noises.
Smell
Newborns’ sense of smell emerges during gestation and they recognize people and objects by scent long before they can see them. Familiar scents, like your own skin, comfort newborns and help them bond with caregivers; similarly, newborns also respond favorably to breast milk’s soothing aroma.
Hearing and sight are essential sensory skills for early learning, and infants require plenty of perceptual stimulation to develop these foundational capacities. Reading stories aloud, playing with different tone/volume voices, exploring new environments and reading stories aloud all help stimulate these capacities and contribute to their perceptual development.
Tummy time offers you an ideal opportunity to introduce infants to simple sensory activities that encourage them to recognize visual cues in their environment, such as setting up a ramp with blocks or paper towel tubes for them to use when rolling toy cars down it. Altering lighting and location also provides new experiences for your infant.
Your child’s sensory system is constantly taking in information from their environment, and their brain must work hard to process it all. To ensure all systems are collaborating successfully in building strong neurocognitive foundations for them to build on, infants should experience all five senses – touch, smell, taste sight and hearing – regularly and here are some easy ways you can do just that!
Sound
As babies explore their environment through sensory exploration, they create billions of neural pathways in their brain that will ultimately shape their behavior, memories, emotions and intelligence as they mature.
Sensory information helps infants form their neural pathways, making sensory activities so essential. Parents and caregivers can also use them as an opportunity to bond with their young charges.
Babies can hear as early as 28 weeks of gestation and will quickly recognize their mother’s voice. Additionally, babies can hear higher pitched sounds such as songs; singing together has many advantages for both parties involved.
Hearing is vital for babies’ spatial awareness and to determine where things are in relation to one another; such as being able to recognize where sound originates. Furthermore, hearing allows us to process echoes; therefore it is best to minimize loud noise exposure as much as possible.
As an enjoyable sensory activity, consider placing your baby in front of a mirror and encouraging them to interact with their reflection. This will teach them to focus their eyes together and improve visual depth perception, essential for body awareness later. Alternatively, take them for a stroll and encourage them to listen out for different sounds such as birds chirping or cars passing by.
Touch
As soon as they’re born, newborns begin taking in information from their environment through sight, sound, smells and textures. Their senses send signals directly to the brain for processing; and more sensory experiences infants have, the faster their cognitive and motor skills will develop.
Sensory play is an enjoyable activity designed to increase infants and toddlers’ awareness of their surroundings and learn to filter information effectively, distinguish between stimuli that may be helpful versus those they should ignore or filter out. Sensory play may also help kids who overreact or seek sensory stimuli – known as sensory defensive or seeking behaviours – manage them more effectively.
Touch is one of the earliest sensory experiences babies encounter. Massage, skin-to-skin contact and sensory toys designed to stimulate your child’s sense of touch can be extremely soothing for babies, helping them feel safe and loved. Furthermore, touch helps build fine and gross motor skills, as well as grip strength – it will teach them what separates soft from hard, warm from cold, wet from dry environments.
Your newborn can experience visual stimulation through flashcards with high contrast images that will capture their interest, as well as providing them with bright and colorful playmats for tummy time and tactile experiences such as crumpling paper or shredding it, crinkling paper, shredding it or modeling clay. Bathtime provides another great sensory opportunity – encouraging them to reach over, under or through objects in the tub and see which sink or float!
Taste
Newborns are highly sensitive to their surroundings from day one. Over time, they will start to recognize familiar voices and sounds around them from parents, touch textures with hands and mouths, taste foods as they move from milk-only diet to solids diet, as well as distinguish the differences between each texture with hands or mouth.
Sensory play is any activity designed to stimulate one or more of a baby’s senses: touch, smell, sound, sight and taste – and can begin from birth. Sensory play doesn’t have to be complicated either and may include activities like walks through nature, playing with sand and water play sets, sensory bins with high contrast cards, toys that can be grasped with fingers or rattles that can be squeezed by fist.
Babies begin using their senses from birth, turning towards sounds and following objects with their eyes. By three months old, babies will use thumb and forefinger to pick up objects and develop eye-hand coordination.
Newborns can enjoy engaging their sense of sight by looking at books with black-and-white or colour pictures, and following movements as they travel across their field of vision. Other sensory activities that babies of all ages enjoy are playing peek-a-boo or hiding something under a cloth.
Movement
Movement is an invaluable form of sensory development during early months. Movement helps a baby learn impulse control and how their body moves in space – such as when dancing to music or balancing on a swing. Furthermore, it develops eye tracking skills which later on help when learning to read.
At around six months old, your baby should already be able to recognize familiar sounds such as your voice or their favorite song and respond accordingly. They should also be able to hold their own hands and explore different textures without assistance from you or others. As they begin tasting solid foods for themselves, their senses of smell and taste will become even more important to them.
Your baby will benefit from taking walks and trips outdoors to explore nature, providing them with sensory experiences such as sight, smell, touch and sound stimulation. Lullabies, tunes and books with colorful pictures are great sources of sensory stimulation for babies of all ages; white noise from tumble dryers or running water or car engines is also soothing auditory stimulation which may aid sleep.
Sensory play can take many forms at each stage in your child’s development, yet simple activities that you can do at home to encourage sensory exploration can never go out of fashion. Create a small ramp with household materials and encourage your child to roll toys down it; or fill a plastic storage bin with uncooked rice, oats, beans or cotton balls for them to explore is another effective way to foster tactile exploration.