Sensory play is great way for kids to learn. However, what about sensory play for babies? Is it too early to start? Today’s guest post is from Marie from For This Season. She is the mom to 3 cutie boys — Bebob, Magoo, and Doodad. Today she’s sharing some wonderful ideas on how to integrate sensory play into your baby’s first year of life.
Here’s today’s guest post:
When I first started writing this post, I planned to give you a large age appropriate list of things you could do with your baby. I had a long list of ideas and was pretty proud of how comprehensive it was. Then I went to the recent Apologia Refresh Sampler in Philadelphia and heard Sherri Seligson speak. I had the great pleasure to talk to her one on one and she gave me a profound piece of advice: Just focus on one thing. I’m an over planner by nature and a bit nervous that my current baby will get lost in the shuffle because he is number 3. I like the idea of having a long list of ideas, but it also makes me feel like I have to do it all. So for Doodad, I’m only going to focus on sensory play and give you a few ideas that have worked well in our house.
Sensory play is a big part of the Montessori approach because it encourages a child’s desire to learn. For example, a child will experience gravity by dropping objects and understand that things always fall down long before you teach it to them. Baby’s first year is a great time to introduce a wide variety of sensory play experiences that will help them explore the world.
The First Few Months
I don’t do anything other than tummy time for the first three or four months. My experience with all three of my boys is that it takes about that long for us to figure each other out. Tummy time helps babies build all the muscles they will need to roll over and eventually crawl. My guys spent quite a bit of time just looking around, so I would make the first sensory experiences visual. You can hang a mobile over the crib, show baby a mirror, or let them watch a ceiling fan.
4 to 6 Months
Sometime in this time frame my boys started grabbing for objects and putting EVERYTHING in their mouths. I would put Doodad in the high chair and give him a few toys on the tray. He had not yet started eating solid food, but enjoyed the sensory experience of seeing and hearing what happens during meal time.
Sitting Up – Around 6 Months
Once my boys could sit up, I starting making treasure boxes for them to explore. I used a small basket that we had and filled it with a variety of objects: wooden spoon, baby safe mirror, rattle, and toys. Remember that baby will try to eat everything, so avoid any small objects. This is very hard in our house because the big boys want to share, so I have to keep a close eye to make sure Legos and racecars don’t end up in our treasure basket.
Once baby is sitting up and eating solid food, meal time can also be a great sensory experience. We have several mesh feeders (ours are from Target, but these are similar) and I let my boys try to feed themselves. I also will sometimes just put a spoonful of baby food on the train and let Doodad “paint”. This does make a HUGE mess, but is a great tactile activity and usually buys me enough time to get the rest of our meal cleaned up.
Crawling – 6 to 8 Months
Once my boys started crawling, they really enjoyed chasing things. We played a lot with balls, where baby can push the ball away and go after it. We would also play a game where we put baby on one side of the room and built a block tower on the other. It was a race to see how tall we can make the tower before baby crawls over to knock it down. Bebop used to play this with Magoo and they both loved it. It’s a great way to include older siblings in baby’s play.
Walking – Around a Year
My two older boys both started walking just after a year old, but they would start to pull up and cruise along things around 10 month old. I would put our treasure basket contents on the couch or the coffee table to encourage them to play while standing. I switch out the treasure basket contents every few weeks, trying to provide a variety of textures, colors, and sounds. (I continue treasure boxes until they become just like sensory bins).
I would encourage you to find one thing to focus on at a time and take a few minutes every day to just play. The first year flies by fast, enjoy the time with your baby.
Thanks, Becky, for these wonderful words of encouragement about not trying to over-do it with your little one, as well as the fabulous ideas on sensory play at each stage of development.
Don’t forget to head over to her blog and check out some of her other posts such as the American flag tie-die shirt tutorial, how to preserve lego instructions by laminating, and babywearing basics: how to wrap a baby in a front carrier.
Did you find this post encouraging? Then please let her know by leaving a comment below!
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