Senses: Children under the age of three explore and learn through their senses. To support development across all areas, use the following activities to engage and excite your baby or toddler.
- Listening Walk: Build awareness of the sounds of every day life. Take a stroll to a park or through your neighborhood. Help your child hone in on the sounds you're hearing, both natural and human-made. Explore every day sounds that interest your child, such as watching the dump truck work, or scouting out the nest of the bird in the tree.
- Packing Bubbles Pop Play: Tape down a sheet of packing bubbles and tiptoe or stomp across them. How many can your child pop?
- Shake, Rattle, and Roll: Experiments with sounds provide your baby with basic lessons about music.
- Fun With Wrapping Paper: Captivate your child with the sights and sounds of these crinkly activities.
- Sound Discrimination: Pour unpopped popcorn, dry beans, dryrice or dry noodles into a cleaned water bottle. Glue gun or crazy glue on the top — or ensure the cap is fitter tightly closed. Place the bottle in a clean sock. Let your child explore the different sounds.
- As he gets older, can he guess what is in the bottle without looking?
- Make two of each kind and see if your child can find the match.
- Have your child shake the bottle out of the sock and then inside the sock and talk about the differences you hear.