When choosing toys for your new baby, stick to safe, simple objects that encourage exploration and open play. Things like rattles and other grabbing toys, balls, activity gyms, and tabletop books are great for encouraging developmental milestones during your baby's first six months of life. Featured image by Matthew Williams from Living Large in 675 Square Feet, Brooklyn Edition. One of the oldest toys in existence, balls will see your child from childhood to adulthood.
Babies will reach them during play on the floor, while babies who can sit and crawl will enjoy throwing, rolling and chasing them. Among the most versatile toys, cups or nesting boxes help baby to classify shapes and colors. Turn them around and the baby becomes a mini engineer, building tall towers. Later, the cups and boxes can be used in imaginative games such as bowls or pots, nests or beds, doll houses and parking garages.
If they are plastic, you can also use them in the bathroom. It's never too early to introduce books to your baby. Even if you still can't keep your head up, your baby will like to cuddle in your arms and listen to the rhythmic sound of your voice as you read. Once they can sit down, babies like to turn pages and look at photographs.
At this stage, parents should choose books made of sturdy cloth or cardboard with simple graphics. Interactive sensory books that squeak, have different textures that baby can feel or flaps that can lift are an excellent option. A toy that grows with your child, basic blocks are a must for any toy collection. At first, a few colored cubes spread out during tummy time will attract the baby to raise his head and extend his fingers.
Later, the small architects of the future will enjoy organizing and stacking them. Depending on your design, these multifaceted toys can also be used to teach colors, letters and numbers. Some even have puzzles on one side. For babies, make sure their first set of blocks includes cubes that fit comfortably in their small hands.
These 10 toys can give your baby a big step forward in learning, and one company has it covered for all of them. Seriously, at birth, the 100 billion nerve cells in the brain are mostly disconnected. And in the first three years of life, babies develop a network that connects them and establishes the foundation of their intelligence throughout life. Child development experts have found that the more babies are exposed to how the world works in those early years, the richer their neural networks become.
For the first few months, your child has a lot in common with a mole. They don't see very well and enjoy confined spaces. This should come as no surprise, as they spent the first few months in the womb, a dark underground house, if ever there was one. In other words, it's time to start training those eyes.
Babies are very short-sighted for the first three months (see best at a distance of 8 to 10 inches from their face) and have difficulty processing anything other than a high-contrast image (think black, white, or red). Black and white cards are a practical way to give newborns the right kind of stimulation, and you'll want to increase the complexity of the images as they are two and three months old. A grasping ball or something else that rolls like a rolling bell is one of the most useful toys to learn in the first year. During tummy time, your baby picks up, grabs, squeezes, and mouths a ball.
Rolling something back and forth in front of your baby can teach him the concepts of circles and spheres. You can use a favorite rolling toy to entice your baby to reach, slide, turn around, and move their body to get closer to the object you want. They can practice raking, then (later) throwing and finally catching it. Between six and nine months, everyone is a magician for your baby.
Remove an object, and as far as they're concerned, it'll be gone forever. They're starting to learn “the permanence of objects,” or the idea that when objects can't be seen, they don't disappear forever. A tool for practicing this is called, aptly, object permanence box. A ball that is dropped inside the box only disappears for a moment before the baby sees it again, and mastering the manipulation of the ball inside the box also gives him good motor skills practice.
With the box, baby practices purposefully grabbing and releasing while trying to drop the ball into the box (a skill they will continue to develop during their first year). Your baby doesn't NEED toys from day one. In the first few weeks they need your comfort, milk, sleep and warmth. Toys that will really attract the imagination of babies and attract them at different stages of development during their first 12 months.
Soft balls are ideal for babies to have from a few weeks. It is in these first few weeks that babies vaguely crush the ball. The six multi-textured My First Baby soft sensory balls come in bright colors and interesting textures to encourage sensory exploration. My First Baby balls promote tactile development with different sizes, textures and shapes.
It is worth buying their first soft balls and blocks with labels on them, although at first it will not interest them, since in this way the first toys will support the later stage of development. So even though 10 months is too early to play with them, I would recommend buying a peg puzzle from now on so that you get the most out of the game possible. The first 12 months of a baby's life are amazing, so it's wonderful to be able to support their development with toys they'll love. During the first two months of life, a baby does not need or want toys.
Most babies don't even discover their own hands until around two months of age. There are also toys that have lasting appeal and are still played with as babies move from their first year to infancy and preschool years. Obviously, balls are great toys for rolling, but the little wooden pulls are also wonderful once babies start crawling or shuffling. Not that you need more stress in your life, but it seems that baby toys aren't just cute things for parents (or a way to distract the child so you can make yourself a sandwich).
The key is to buy toys that babies can use at their current age and stage, while encouraging exploration and refinement of skills. Getting babies to lift their heads during tummy time is a breeze with this sturdy mirror designed to sit firmly on its wide base and give your baby a clear and undistorted view of their wonderful face. Rubber ducks, cups and jugs for pouring water and floating toys are ideal for babies to play in the bathroom. Newborns are fascinated by everything around them, so you could argue that babies will make their own toys.
So, even though you don't exactly need toys for newborn babies, you do need a way to play with them, and toys make it easier. Its mission is to take everything experts know about early childhood development and design toys and tools that provide babies with meaningful learning experiences, appropriate for each age and stage. The big takeaway from this is that you don't need to spend a fortune on toys for your baby to help his development during the first year. For babies between two and six months old, toys that can be grasped will help them develop gross motor skills.
Baby toys also captivate with bright colors, intricate patterns, buttons and levers that respond to their touch, interesting noises and varied textures. As I have seen him delight in the gift boxes while ignoring the toys inside, I have become increasingly curious about how many toys children really need. Any toy that offers different textures and moving parts, such as moving back and forth, are toys that 2-month-old children will appreciate. .
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