Baby and child development through play

BIRTH TO 3 MONTHS
Very young babies use their senses to play. During the first months of your baby toys are mainly for watching, listening, touching, swatting, but not for operations. You will begin to see the personality of your baby as you get out of these precious first smiles, gurgles and GOOS. Your baby is now ready to play physical experiments. Take cues from your baby when deciding when and how to play. If they are happy and settled, try to play games more active, as cuckoo or "swing", but if they are tired or over stimulated, May they prefer to be rocked or sung. During the first three months, a lot of your baby's first experience to play either with their own bodies. Just look at how babies are fascinated their fingers and toes and use their legs to kick to objects. Homemade Toy Ideas: Create your own portable black and white pieces of white cardboard. Cut the cardboard into different shapes and thread through a string. Draw different geometric shapes (stripes, zigzags, swirls) on each surface. Hang above your crib or changing table.

BABY 3-6 MONTHS

At about four months, babies more interested in objects. They explore through the mouth, grab, shake and tap to toys must be strong and small enough to be caught, but not so small that they can be swallowed. If you are buying toys, looking for different colors, sizes, shapes, sounds and textures. Between five and seven months, your baby will have more interest to show what they can do with a toy. If your baby is like mine, they like to bang - the stronger the better! Give a baby a block and they bang on the floor, replace it with a cat and they bang it on the floor, provide a toy doll ... you guessed it - bang! If your baby's first words are still a few months, they begin to experiment with different sounds. "Conversation" of games are fantastic to expand their repertoire as well as verbal instruction on infants give and take. Watch how your baby tries to imitate what you say and "attached" conversations. Ask questions of your child and respond with enthusiasm to their answers, feel valued. Babies also love to read - choose books that are simple, with bright images of people, animals or places and including simple rhythmic stories. Homemade Toy Ideas: Make a lift-the-flap book photo - cut four x A4 size pieces of hardboard, glue on pictures of faces or animals favorite people in the life of your baby. Cut the pieces of cotton fabric color - about the size slightly bigger than the pictures. Tape the fabric on the picture above the upper edge only. Punch a few holes in the cardboard and fasten the four pieces together with string to make a book. Make your own sensory mat by sewing different pieces of fabric (eg denim, silk, velvet, felt). Choose contrasting colors, patterns and textures. Or use pieces of cloth to make a soft ball - double stitching, complete with stuffing and a bell - and fix securely.

BABY 6-12 MONTHS
Your baby has become quite the little scientist - the world is now full of things to discover! Look how they investigate by pushing, pulling, typing, tasting and lower. Older babies to put things in love and out of containers and "posting" of objects (my grandmother for her false teeth air for three days!) Your 10 months spend more time playing with a toy and prefer new toys familiar ones. Crawling gives them more freedom to explore and achieve the objects only works when it happens (usually between 10 and 16 months).

Placing special toys just beyond their reach can encourage exploration. Some babies do not crawl - May you find yours to be very adept at rolling, "commando" around the exploration or shuffling their results. Homemade Toy Ideas: Make your own finger paint using cornstarch, water and food coloring. Spread a few large pieces of paper and tape your baby's diapers. Let the fun of painting on paper, as well as itself (it is natural, it does not matter what goes in your mouth!) Older babies like to play under the supervision of water. Raid your closet for Tupperware beakers and measuring cups of different sizes. Fill a large pail of water, add food coloring for fun. You can use this opportunity to explore the concepts of volume and buoyancy. Include items flowing (metal spoons, keys) and float (sponges, plastic plate).