Infant Brain Development

These games will help to grow the brains of infants. Whether it’s through singing, dancing, cuddling, rocking, talking, smelling, or tasting, you can encourage the pathways of their brains to make new connections.

Learning Objective - Identifying Body Parts
Sit in front of a mirror with your baby in your lap.
Say, “Who is that baby?”
Wave your baby’s hand and say, “Hi, baby.”
Say, “Where’s the baby’s foot?”
Wave your baby’s foot and say, “Hi, foot.”
Continue asking questions and moving different parts of your baby’s body.
Shake heads, wave bye-bye, clap hands, etc.

Things you can do to take this activity to the next step:
For building confidence – Repeat the actions with a complimentary remark. For example, you can say, “What a nice foot.”
For developing the idea – Add new actions with each body part. Move the body part up and down or back and forth.
For moving forward – Ask the person in the mirror questions about additional body parts, For example, “Where are your fingernails?”

Learning Objective - Developing fine motor skills
Show the children how to take the thumb of one hand and put it into the fist of the other hand.
Practice this activity several times.
Take your thumb and put it into the fist of the other hand.
Say the following rhyme with great drama.
Jack in the box
You sit so still
Can you come out?
Yes, I will. – pull thumb out of fist

Things you can do to take this activity to the next step:
For building confidence – “Can you show me your thumb? Can you make a fist?”
For developing the idea – “Can you put your thumb of one hand in the fist of your other hand?” (help the child if they cannot do it themselves)
For moving forward - “You did a good shop with that poem. Let’s try to make our bodies be a jack-in-the-box.