Carrasco Care

New Born-18 months

Feather

Using a feather to touch different parts of the baby's body helps promote development. The babies are able to use their sense of touch and sight.

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Lay the baby on the floor and gently touch the baby on different parts of their body including their feet, legs, belly, arms, hands, neck and face.

You can sing Head Shoulders knees & Toes, but change the words to the body part you are touching.

Drop or throw the feather and watch it float to the ground

Shaker Egg

The shaker egg provides auditory stimulation. This makes it a great multi sensory learning tool. Shaking the egg and moving to music helps promote early brain development

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To encourage your baby to move you can roll the egg shaker and motivate the baby to move towards it.

Use words such as ‘shake’, ‘stop’, ‘go’, ‘soft’ and ‘loud’ to prompt the baby to follow directions help to develop communication skills and language.

Shake the egg to the beat of your favorite songs or shake the egg to add a new elemt to story time

Mirror

Mirrors help develop self-awareness and Visual senses. Using it can encourage your baby to roll, sit up, crawl and stand just simply because they want to get closer to the reflection.

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Set a mirror in front of your baby during tummy time. Tummy time in front of mirrors encourages gross motor development, observation, and development of self-awareness.

Sit with the baby in your lap and both face the mirror. Make different facial expressions and see if the infant reacts.

You can sing songs, say rhymes and play peek-a-boo with the mirror in front of both you and the baby.

Rhythm sticks

Using drumsticks has many different benefits including enhancing the development of auditory skills, fine motor skills, sense of rhythm and body. The drum sticks help develop the babies bilateral coordination

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Using the rhythm sticks you can gently touch diffrent parts of the baby (Toes, feet, belly, hands, head Ex). This can help teach the baby there body parts

ou can lay your baby on a play mat, sit them either infront or with you and sing your favrite nursery rymes. Using the sticks play the rythm.

Hold your babies hand and help them make a beat. Get creative!

Use your Rythm sticks to make loud and quiet sounds.

Bubbles

Bubbles excite a curiosity in babies that makes them eager to investigate their world with their senses (sight and touch in this case, and sound if parents blow gently near their ears). Bubbles help babies develop an awareness of shape, form, and texture.provide many opportunities to encourage developing language skills as you talk about the bubbles being; big, small, wet, slimy a

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For tummy time you can place a shallow container of water in front of your baby and blow the bubbles up and towards the container. The ones that land in can be blown around gently.

During tummy time you can place some bubble liquid in the water and blow through a straw to create many bubbles

Try catching a bubble on your wand then let your baby reach to pop it

Once crawling and walking your baby will love to chase after the bubbles and pop them in the air or on the floor. Provide extra sensory by playing on diffrent surfaces.

Balloons

Balloons can help with hand eye coordination and enhance their visual and spatial awareness. it can help motivate the baby to move. Balloons encourage sensory development by touching, squeezing, and bouncing balloons, babies can improve their sensory stimulation.

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Stand in front of your baby and place a balloon in your hands. Create sounds by running one of your fingers along its surface and watch your baby try to do the same

Toss the ballon in the air and watch the ballon float back down towards your baby and you

Tie the ballon above the baby and let them kick or try and grab the ballon.

Throw or roll the ballon to the baby and let them try to figure out how to do it back

Teether

Teethers help Small motor skills in the hands. Chewing on the edges of the teether is great for your baby's jaw, lips, tongue and cheek. It will introduces them to the motions they'll rely on to eat and natural jaw development.

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During tummy time, simply lay out a few teethers in front of baby.

Place the teether a little further away from the baby so that they are able reach for it.

Hang the teether on an activity arch and watch the baby reach for it

Black and White Cards

A babies vision slowly develop so using black and white picture cards will allow your newborn to increase their visual development. Bold black and white picture cards stimulate the development of your little ones optic nerves. Black and white provid your baby with visual stimuli, it can train your newborn’s vision.

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You can move the cards to help your baby move their head in different directions.

You can lay your baby on their belly and display the black and white images on the ground or along the wall.

Lay the baby on their back and allow them to look at the cards, eventually your little one will try to reach.

Place your baby’s cards in the car, on your shirt, or on their play gym. All these places are a great way to help your little one explore there world.