Discover Your Hands!

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

FOR INFANTS
Learning Objective - Discovering your hands
Babies love to stare at interesting faces and toys.

Take several colorful toys and, one at a time, slowly move it back and forth in front of your baby to stimulate his vision.

This is also the time when babies discover their hands. They watch and watch and finally discover that they can make their hands appear and disappear.
Take your baby’s hands and gently clap them in front of his face. As you do this, say the following poem:
Clap, clap, clap your hands,
Clap your hands together.
Put your hands on Mommy’s face. (substitute name of the person doing the rhyme with baby)
Clap your hands together.
Clap, clap, clap your hands,
Clap your hands together
Put your hands on baby’s face (substitute child’s name)
Clap your hands together

Things to do to take this activity to the next level:
For building confidence – Use encouraging phrases to tell the baby what a good job she is doing.

For developing the idea – Continue playing the game and adding new parts to touch. Hair, eyes, nose and lips are good to start with.

For moving forward - Say “I can clap my hands.” Clap your hands. Now say, “You can clap your hands.” Take the baby’s hands and clap them. Repeat this except the next time, clap the baby’s hands once and encourage her to do it by herself.

Learning Objectives – To strengthen your baby’s back and neck
Lie on your back and put your baby on your tummy.

With your hands firmly around his waist or chest, raise your baby in the air and up to your face.

Say the following and do the actions:
Where’s my baby?
There he is. (lift him up to your face)
Where’s my baby?
There he is. (bring him back down to your tummy)
Where’s my baby?
There he is. (bring him back up to your face)
Where’s my baby?
There he is. (bring him back down to your tummy)
Where’s my baby? Up high, high, high. (bring your baby up high over your face)
Where’s my baby? (bring him back down to your tummy

Keep repeating the high, high, high part.

Things to do to take this activity to the next level:
For building confidence - Each time you go high, add a fun sound like “whee” or “yay,”

For developing the idea -  Continue to play games with your baby where you hold him and take him high in the air. With older infants, sit on the floor with your baby sitting in front of you. While holding him firmly around his waist or chest, rock back and forth or side to side. Sing a song as you play this game.

For moving forward - Brain research says that developing strength and balance lays the groundwork for crawling and internal feelings of self-confidence.