Infant Brain Development

A young child's brain grows at a phenomenal rate in the early years of life opening a window of opportunity for learning that occurs only once in a lifetime.

These simple games will promote early brain development for Infants and toddlers. Activites for toddler brain development will follow in a different post next week, so be sure to tune in!

REMEMBERING – This game helps to develop your baby’s memory.
Place two blocks in front of your baby. The blocks should be totally different in appearance.

Say to your baby, “This is the red block.” as you pick it up. (Describe the block you are picking up)

Take the red block and put it behind your back.

Make sure that your little one is watching where you put the block.

Ask your baby, “Where is the red block?"

He will give you a sign that he knows where it is. Pointing and making sounds are ways that your infant can communicate with you.

Praise him with cheers, claps, oohs and aahs.

Repeat with the second block.

If this is working, you can hide the block in different places. Some ideas are: behind the baby, under a nearby table or chair, or under a blanket or a scarf.

MIRROR GAMES
The neurons for vision begin to form very early. Babies need stimulating visual experiences to help develop their neurons.

Looking into a mirror is great fun and gives your baby another perspective on who he is.

Here are some things that you can do with your baby as you look into a full length mirror.

Smile.
Shake different parts of the body.
Make faces with silly sounds.
Make sounds with your lips.
Make animal sounds.
Rock back and forth.

Nursery Rhymes

Nursery rhymes can play an important part in children’s lives. For many children, nursery rhymes are the first songs and stories that they hear.

I remember as a child learning and singing nursery rhymes at home and at school. Think about the ones that you know and teach them to your children.

Nursery rhymes stimulate memory, improve language skills, develop appreciation for music, enrich vocabulary, phonemic awareness, encourage thinking skills, and develop pre-reading skills….and best of all, they are fun!

LITTLE MISS MUFFET
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider and sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

This is a lot of fun to role play. You will need a group of children.

The children take turns being Miss Muffet pretending to eat curds and whey. Another child pretends to sneak up behind her as the spider. Students are encouraged to scream a really good "eeek!"

I wrote an additional verse to Miss Muffet. It appears on the Sniggles, Squirrels, and Chickenpox CD and in the I Love Children Songbook.

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider and sat down beside her
And said “what a very nice day.”

WHO AM I?
Using nursery rhymes that your children are familiar with, play this game.

When the subject is identified, everyone says the nursery rhyme together.

Give clues to nursery rhyme characters. For example:
I am a girl.
I have an animal that follows me to school.

Mary Had a Little Lamb
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece as white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went
That lamb was sure to go.


It followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rules,
It made the children laugh and play,
To see a lamb at school.

Clue: I am a mouse
I like to run up and down clocks

Hickory, Dickory, Dock
Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse did run,
Hickory, dickory, dock.

Clue: I am round.
I sat on a wall and fell down.

Humpty Dumpty
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Nursery rhymes will help stimulate your child's memory, improve their language skills and develop their appreciation for music.

Toddlers - Touch

Games involving the senses help develop memory in young children.

When areas of the brain experience a stimulus, it increases the strength of the signal to the brain.

Here are some games that you can play that will develop the sense of touch.

BAG MYSTERIES
Fill three plastic bags with different textured materials. For example, popcorn, cooked pasta, and jello.

Let the children feel the bags and tell you how it feels.

It’s important for you to give the children the vocabulary to use: squishy, hard, soft, smooth, etc.

HEAD AND SHOULDERS
Touch the body parts as you say the words in the chant. If you want to sing the chant, it goes to the tune of “Tavern in the Town.”

Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,
Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,
And eyes and ears and mouth and nose,
Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

Start slowly and each time you say the words, go a little faster. The children love to do this.

FEELING FRUIT
Take an orange, an apple, and a banana and place them in separate plastic bags.

Ask the children to identify the fruit by feeling the bag and not looking at it.

FEEL THE SHAPE
Cut several assorted sized shapes from heavy cardboard or tag board. A circle, a square, a triangle and any others that the children will recognize.

Ask a child to close his eyes. Ask him to feel the shape and to guess what shape it is by using his sense of touch. Let each child to have a turn.

A TOUCH POEM
Touch your shoulders,
Touch your knees,
Touch your hands behind you please.
Touch your elbows,
touch your toes
Touch your hair,
and touch your nose!
Touch the wall,
Touch the floor,
Touch the table,
Touch the door.

TOUCH THE ROOM
Give your child directions to walk around the room and look for different textures to touch. This will familiarize them with the way things feel.

Start with soft. Look around the room and touch something soft. How many soft things can we find?

Continue on with hard, bumpy, cold, warm and smooth.

Infants - Cause and Effect

Infants enjoy dropping things.

Use the following games as learning experiences for your infants.

Babies like to throw things out of the high chair or over the side of the crib. They watch the objects fall and
listen to the sound it makes when it hits the floor. Your baby is exploring cause and effect relationships.

LISTEN TO THE SOUND
Your baby should be sitting in a high chair.

Take a large basket or a pot and put it on the floor next to the highchair.

Fill a separate container with several small objects and place the container in front of your baby.

Take something from the container and drop it into the basket.

Ask your baby to copy you..

If he doesn’t understand, put one of the objects in his hand and help him drop it..

When it drops, say words like “bumpity bump” or “ding dong.”

Give the baby objects that fall with different sounds. For example: a rattle, a wooden spoon, a ball, and a washcloth. Talk about the different sounds. “Oh, that was so soft.” “That rattle sounded noisy.”

BOUNCING
Another reason that babies like to throw things out of the high chair is to see what happens to the object.

Does it bounce like a ball or does it stay still? Actually, she is learning about the laws of gravity.

Give her a wadded up piece of paper to throw on the floor. Next, give her a tennis ball or small rubber ball to do the same.

Talk about the differences. “Oh look, that ball bounced. Oh look, the paper didn’t bounce. Here is a block. I wonder if it will bounce.”

When your baby throws food on the floor, she is probably wanting to see if it will bounce!

Games for Enjoying Music with Children

Children of all ages express themselves through music. Even at an early age children sway, bounce, and move their hands in response to the music they hear.

Here are two games for enjoying music with your children.

GROWING UP
1. Pretend to be a little seed just planted in the ground.
2. Water the little seed.
3. Let the sun shine on the little seed.
4. Sing the scale and pretend to grow as the music goes up.
5. Singing the scale means: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do....just like in the song "Doe a deer, a female deer."
6. When you come to the last note in the scale, say "Look, now I'm a beautiful flower!"

NOW IT'S TIME
1. Sit on the floor with your child and do what the words say.
2. Sing to the tune of "London Bridge."
Now it's time to touch our nose
Touch our nose, touch our nose
Now it's time to touch our nose
My fair (child's name)

Now it's time to blink our eyes
Now it's time to touch our toes
Now it's time to shake our feet
Now it's time to stand up tall
Now it's time to sit back down

Set the Stage for Future Learning

The games in this section are designed for parents, grandparents and all adults who want to nurture their toddlers mentally as well as emotionally. Each game involves simple words, movements and interactions that cultivate one or more of the basic skills --language, thinking, social and physical manipulation -- that set the stage for all future learning.

CAR PUPPETS
This game will keep your toddler occupied in the car and develop her language skills.
1. Draw a face on each of your child's thumbs with a felt tip marker.
2. Name the thumb puppets so that you can talk to them. "Hello, funny face," or "How are you, Billy?"
3. As you drive, talk to the thumb puppets. Your toddler can talk back to you or just move his thumbs up and down in reply.
4. Here are some things that you can say to the puppets.
"Do you see that red car?"
"Look at the beautiful trees."
"Red light stop, green light go."
5. Ask the puppets to join you in singing a familiar song like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
6. Play for three to five minutes

COLOR WALK
This game will help your child recognize colors for visual and vocabulary development.
1. Take your toddler on a color walk through your house. Select a certain color toy and take
it with you.
2. Find one or two objects in each room that are the same color as the toy you are carrying.
3. Talk about what you've found. For example, "Bobby's yellow shirt is the same color as your yellow ball," or "My blue blouse is the same color as your blue block."
4. Another variation of this game is to carry a laundry basket around, collecting toys and other objects of the same color.

Essential Ingredient in Infant Care

The most essential ingredient in infant care is a warm, responsive, and dependable adult caregiver. Try to spend lots of time holding, cuddling, and playing with the infants in your care. You will be richly rewarded with babbles, smiles, and squeals of laughter.

Here are are two games to play that help an infant’s neurons connect to parts of the brain that develop confidence and trust. Recommended for 3-6 month old infants.

NUGGLE NOSE1. Hold your baby in the air and say, “Nose, nose, nuggle nose.”
2 On the word “nuggle,” bring him down and touch your nose to his.
3. Keep repeating this game touching noses on the word “nuggle.”4. After you have played this a few times, say the word “nuggle” more than one time, always touching noses on the word “nuggle.”5. For example, say “nuggle, nuggle, nuggle, nose.”
Gently touching your baby will make him feel secure and safe, enabling him to become confident and, eventually, independent.

GOING UP THE ESCALATOR
1. Hold onto baby’s fingers and gently lift baby’s arms as you say the following rhyme:
Going up the escalator
Up, up, up.
Going down the escalator
Down, down, down.
2. Lift your baby’s legs and say the rhyme.
3. Continue lifting different parts of your baby’s body, saying the rhyme each time.
4. Try ending with lifting him up in the air and down.
5. Always give a kiss on the down part.

Loving attachments help babies develop trust.