Your Baby Week 20
You child continues to be more and more active each week. This week, you may begin to notice how coordinated your little one has become. You may even notice that he is now able to pass objects back and forth repeatedly between his hands!
Your child acquires an immense amount of information in the first year of his life. Playtime is a great time for you to continue to help your baby learn about his world. And though playtime to him may include dropping items off his highchair for you to pick up, this game is a way for him to learn about his environment and signals major development in his motor and cognitive skills.
Below you will find some ideas for playtime that will stimulate and educate your baby. These are sure to be more fun for you than repeatedly picking up toys dropped from his highchair!
Texture
You have many items in your home that can teach your baby about touch and texture. Keeping a box full of different materials can be an interesting and fun way to interact with your little one. Most fabric stores have boxes of scraps and discarded materials that they would be happy to let you explore for pieces of different fabrics. Give her a swatch of velvet and see how she reacts to it, maybe even tickle her feet with it. Next hand her a swatch of terrycloth, tell her it's soft. Let her play with it and roll it around in her hands. Keep switching fabrics while describing how each feels.
Vision
You can use many household items to stimulate your baby’s vision. Infants love mirrors. At first, they may believe they are looking at another child and you will be able to witness them waving and smiling at the “other” baby. But it won’t be long before they understand that it is their own reflection.
This one is particularly fun! Hold up two pictures of the same image about 8-10 inches away from your infants face. The images shouldn’t be too busy or have too many distracting items of colors, but at least one major item in the picture should be missing. For example, if it is a picture of a house, maybe one will have a big sun in the corner and the other won’t. Even a young baby will look back and forth and figure out the distinguishing features! This sets the stage for letter recognition and reading later on.
Language
Use every opportunity you can to teach your baby about her world. Count objects in the room, name each article of clothing before you put it on her, go to the public library and take advantage of their story hour and their children’s section. Read books together and don’t be concerned if she wants to hear the same one over and over again. This is just the beginning of her developing preferences and her unique personality!
