Early life experience is critical to babies’ development – aiding cognitive, physical and emotional growth.
Sensory play is a fantastic way for your infant or child to develop all their senses while bonding with you as their caregiver. In this article we share some tried-and-tested sensory activities for newcomers that you can try with your newborn!
Tummy Time
Tummy Time is an exciting sensory development activity designed to strengthen new born babies’ back, neck, and shoulder muscles – an essential preparation for rolling and crawling! Furthermore, this is also an opportunity for them to gain perspective by seeing things from eye level – which helps develop visual skills essential for lifelong success.
Early on after your baby returns from the hospital, initiate tummy time by placing them on a play mat or blanket featuring various textures, colors, shapes and sizes of play materials.
To keep your baby entertained during tummy time, try placing toys that are close to her eye line and reach, such as rattles or crinkle toys – this way she can focus on them rather than her surroundings, according to physiotherapist Jennifer Halfin.
Physiotherapists indicate that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends tummy time as essential to your baby’s motor development. Babies who don’t spend enough time on their tummies miss out on milestones such as rolling and crawling due to lacking strength in their back, neck, shoulders and arms.
Tummy time can help your baby avoid developing plagiocephaly, or positional head flattening, which causes their face to look uneven or squishy when spending too much time lying on their backs, such as while in a car seat or stroller. Furthermore, it reduces SIDS risk significantly – and ultimately makes for an unforgettable bonding experience between parent and baby!
High Contrast Images
High contrast images, or toys that use dark and bright colors to captivate a baby’s attention, may include simple patterns, shapes or monotone images such as those depicting rainbows.
Newborns tend to see in black and white until their color vision develops, so using high contrast images as a way of introducing them to their environment is ideal. Furthermore, using such imagery may encourage older siblings to help take care of the new baby.
To create High Contrast Images on your own, take pictures of varying objects in different settings and import the photos into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to fine-tune their contrast levels.
Adjust the exposure, shadows, highlights, blacks and whites of each photo for an enhanced high-contrast effect. This will make a picture of your baby even more captivating!
Best of all, this technique works on any camera – including smartphones. All it requires are proper settings in place.
High Contrast Images can also benefit your baby’s brain development. Since babies are born with unconnected nerve cells, visual stimulation plays a key role in shaping their brains.
High contrast images can help your baby develop better vision and strengthen eye muscles. Furthermore, these images make it easier for your infant to focus than regular pictures of people or objects.
Mirror Play
Mirrors can help your baby gain self-awareness through play time with them and you. Not only is this beneficial to their development process, but it’s also a fantastic opportunity for building bonds that contribute to overall wellbeing in children.
Encourage your child to enjoy various mirror activities by selecting ones designed with their safety in mind, such as hand-held mirrors that promote fine motor development as they grasp it and attempt to move it across their surroundings. These activities provide valuable experiences while stimulating fine motor development while supporting fine motor development as your baby grasps, explores, and manipulates their environment through various perspectives offered by mirrors.
Young infants may benefit from setting a mirror in front of them during tummy time to encourage gross motor development and observation. Babies will find this mirror irresistible as their visual skills advance, providing ample opportunities to gaze upon it for extended periods.
Mirror play also assists babies with recognising familiar faces and tracking their movements, while simultaneously encouraging social and emotional development through bonding sessions with you or siblings.
At this age, they’re beginning to recognize their own emotions as distinct from those of others; this is essential in developing empathy; mirrors can provide an ideal way for your child and yourself to practice this concept together in an enjoyable manner.
Mirrors can help your baby recognize various body parts such as their nose, hair and eyelids and how to make funny faces. This will develop imitation skills as well as boost their language development.
Sensory Bottles
Sensory Bottles are an ideal way to engage a baby’s senses during tummy time and other sensory development activities. Made out of different materials, these sensory bottles allow children to learn about cause-and-effect relationships as well as fine motor and gross motor development skills, sensory exploration, etc.
Voss water bottles make an excellent sensory bottle choice as they feature wide openings at the top and can stand on their own on either end, making it easy to fit large items inside.
Many new born babies find joy in exploring their world by feeling and hearing various textures and sounds in the environment. A bottle can provide a convenient way of experiencing all this by filling it with different materials such as sand, colored rice, beads, confetti straws pebbles and more!
Kids often become mesmerized when seeing items inside a bottle move slowly back and forth, which can help relax them and bring about some sense of calm. This method may also prove beneficial for children who may not know how to self-soothe or need some way to relax themselves independently, such as those struggling with anxiety or other psychological disorders that require them to find ways to relax themselves.
Sensory bottles can help teach children about opposites and water’s properties. Simply fill two clear plastic bottles and freeze one; your baby will be fascinated with how the cold affects how water moves in its counterpart bottle.
Sensory bottles are simple and fun to create – why not experiment with some of these ideas for your next tummy time session or sensory development activity?
Teething Toys
Teething toys are an engaging way to build motor skills and hand-eye coordination in children, soothe their gums and prepare them for semi-solid or solid foods.
Select teething toys suitable for your baby’s developmental stage by carefully reading product descriptions before purchasing. Choose toys without sharp edges or pointed tips so they won’t put unnecessary pressure on their little jaws when chewing.
Many teething toys make rattling noises that will amuse and encourage your child to chew harder, as well as soothing sore gums.
An ideal teething toy should be constructed of sturdy materials that can withstand repeated use by your child, yet still remain easy to clean and sanitize so as to remain free from bacteria and mold growth.
Some parents prefer teethers that can be chilled in the refrigerator to provide soothing cooling relief for sore gums, however it’s important not to overdo it and leave them there until just cold (usually 10-15 minutes).
Silicone teething toys that are hypoallergenic are another popular choice, designed to ensure maximum comfort for your child. Their shape easily reaches back into their mouth so it can massage those tender gums gently.
Teething toys are an essential tool for new-borns. They help stimulate different muscles in your child’s mouth while attenuating his gag reflex, as well as prepare them for semi-solid or solid food consumption. Teething toys can provide great distraction for fussy babies while simultaneously protecting developing teeth from becoming dependent upon pacifiers and other items which could harm them further.