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From the moment they’re born, babies are doing a lot of growing very quickly. Every day they’re learning more about the world, the people around them and themselves. Babies are endlessly curious and always discovering new ways to grab, pull and put their small hands on things to see what else they can do. There are many toys you can provide for your baby, to help them develop and learn.
Depending on how old your baby is, they’ll be in a different developmental stage and likely interacting with the world and things in it in a number of different ways. For each of these developmental stages, there are different toys and activities which are ideal for helping their progress and growth at this point.
In the first six months of the babies life, they’re learning about their own bodies and the things they can do. They can move their little arms around and touch things. Their eyesight is developing and they’re learning to track and follow objects, and recognizing faces and features around them.
The best toy for babies in the first sixth months of their lives is anything they can grab and shake. Rattles are designed for this stage of their lives, with handles perfect for grasping baby hands. To help your baby learn about sounds and movement, you can give them a rattle that has a noisemaker inside and watch them wave their arms around as they listen and smile at the sounds they’re producing.
As their hearing and eyesight develop, babies also love to look at colorful objects and pictures, catch sight of their own chubby faces in a mirror and hear gentle lullabies.
As infants grow a little older, their imagination begins to develop, and their range of motion and movements continues to grow. This is when they’ll start babbling and reaching out to grab anything and everything all around them. Their curiosity is growing even more and they want to learn everything they can.
Great toys for babies in this stage are soft dolls and puppets that they can play pretend with, to encourage their active imagination. Anything they can grab and pull apart, like stacking cubes or nesting dolls. Their muscles are developing at this stage so babies will love to have things to push and pull, such as soft balls and pull toys.
After their 1st birthday’s babies will want to continue learning and exploring their world even more, and now likely have the movement skills to do it! They will be learning to walk and even climb and will be grabbing and playing with anything they can reach.
Toys they can play pretend with have even greater appeal now, and toddlers love to play with toy phones and costumes, toy cars and baby carriages and try and emanate the things they see their parents doing. They also love creating things and will have endless fun expressing their artistic talents with non toxic markers and paint.
