Games to Play with Infants

You would love the book The Wonder Years by Dr. Tanya Remer Altmann and the APA.

http://www.amazon.com/Wonder-Years-Successfully-Developme...

We do "head, shoulders, knees and toes" and rolling the beach ball with the 7 month old that I watch. He loves it when I move his hands to all of his body parts while singing the song. Over, and over, and over, lol.

One thing I know of that's supposed to enhance development is to expose your baby to different sounds and textures - make a sensory table at home with little areas he can explore...like dried leaves he can crunch, jello he can stick his hands into, water to splash, and other bins filled with brightly colored items that he can explore (but not too small to be a choking hazard). Also a great age to start taking him to places where he can see flowers, plants, and bugs.

during the first year of life, your babies brain is developing, along with his body. In order to get good and appropriate development, he needs lots and lots of floor time. Be sure that you encourage him to creep along the floor, perhaps make an obstacle course under chairs, over pillows, picking up his fav toys and dropping in buckets as he goes. This is developing vision attention, later bladder control, and eventually writing skills.

Don't forget the back time - roll him onto his back, and rub his tummy, sing him songs while he's trying to pull his toys out of your hands. He needs back time for developing memory and attention, auditory and visual processing (very necessary for school!).

When he's rocking on his hands and knees he is developing some of the final vision skills - like being able to track smoothly (necessary for reading) and convergence (necessary for copying off the board). So, the more he plays on the floor, the better his brain in developing! So good you are asking, and playing so he can develop!

Have fun!!

pat-a-cake is great to teach clapping! My baby loves it when we just do it over, and over, and over!! LOL. We also read to him a lot, and we did a lot of reading with our oldest, who now, 2, LOVES books!

Go to your local library and ask the children's librarian or the resource librarian for some suggestions. They have the whole world of books at their fingertips. We checked out tons of books on this topic from our library and they were wonderful. I enjoyed trying out all the new games and playing certain music to see just what the results were going to be. They should also have a reading/story time for little ones, some have it separated like 0-3 at one time of day then the older ones at a little different time and a bit longer too.