To See and To Smell / Oh, My Goodness! Oh, My Gracious!

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 brain pathways to make new connections.

Activities for Infants

 

To See and To Smell

The current brain research says that what babies see and smell create brain connections. The external senses—vision, hearing, smell, and touch stimulate the neurons to connect with one another.

 

Exposing your baby to many different sensations will broaden his awareness of himself and the world.

 

Try gently rubbing your baby’s arms with different fabrics. Satin, silk, wool, and terrycloth are good fabrics to start with.

 

Use descriptive words as you rub the fabric on your baby’s arm. Some words that you can use are soft, silky, scratchy, cool, rough, and smooth.

 

Give your baby an opportunity to experience different smells. Go outside and smell the air, the flowers, the grass, and a leaf.

 

Cut in half a lemon, a lime, and an orange. Enjoy the smell of the freshly cut fruit.

 

Ideas for taking this activity to the next level:

For building confidence – Repeat one of the activities for three consecutive days. 

 

For developing the idea – After three days, do the activity one time and then add a new activity. For example if you were rubbing a fabric on your baby’s arm, the new activity could be rubbing the same fabric on your baby’s cheek.

 

For moving forward – Give a fabric to your baby and let him rub it on your arm. Ask him to rub it on the parts of your body that you rubbed on him. 

 

Repeat the same idea by giving him a piece of fruit for you to smell. Respond with appropriate words.

 

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Oh, My Goodness! Oh, My Gracious!

The newest brain research says that when children receive warm, responsive care, they are more likely to feel safe and secure and to be able to build attachments to others.

 

To encourage a sense of security and safe feelings, say the following to your child.

 

Oh, my goodness,

Oh, my gracious,

Look who’s here, look who’s here.

Oh, my goodness,

Oh, my gracious,

It’s my favorite (child’s name)

 

Hold your child close and give him a big hug.

 

Repeat the poem again and when you hug your child, hold him high in the air and then bring him down for a big kiss.

 

Try rocking him, slowly spinning him around, or any other loving motion.

 

Your little one will absolutely love this!

 

Ideas for taking this activity to the next level:

For building confidence – Say the rhyme and leave out your child’s name for her to fill in. 

 

For developing the idea – Play the game using a stuffed animal and say the name of the stuffed toy. 

 

For moving forward – Clap your hands as you say the rhyme. When you come to the name at the end of the rhyme, hold your hands over your head and clap several times.

Singing with Bells / Funky Sounds

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 brain pathways to make new connections.

Music Activities for Infants and Toddlers

Singing with Bells

Place a jingle bell inside an empty film canister. Tape or glue the lid on securely. Shake the canister and sing familiar songs like "This Old Man," "A B C Song," and "One Elephant."

Play this game with the bell.

Sing to the tune of "If You’re Happy and You Know It."

Shake the bell in the air, in the air, (hold your hands over your head to shake the bell)
Shake the bell in the air, in the air,
Shake the bell in the air and hold it up right there,
Shake the bell in the air, in the air.
Shake the bell on the side, on the side, (hold hands to one side for shaking)
Shake the bell on the side, on the side,
Shake the bell on the side as you smile very wide,
Shake the bell on the side, on the side.
Shake the bell down below, down below, (shake the bell below your knees)
Shake the bell down below, down below.
Shake the bell down below and smile and say “hello,”
Shake the bell down below, down below.

Ideas for taking this activity to the next level:
For building confidence - “This jingle bell will make our singing sound beautiful.” Sing several familiar songs and shake the bells.

For developing the idea –“Which song did you like singing? Can you think of another song we could sing?”

For moving forward – “Do we have to shake our bells all through the song or could we shake them at certain times?” Try singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and only shaking the bells on word “lamb.”

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Funky Sounds

 

Brain research says that auditory discrimination of various types of sounds must be developed in order to be able to process letter sounds.

 

This activity is an important pre-reading experience.

Locate several types of containers with lids.

 

Fill each container with a different object such as sand, buttons, bells, stones, beads, birdseed, etc.

 

Securely attach the lid with super glue and/or tape. You can decorate the outside of the container if you like.

 

Give your child the opportunity to shake and make some noise with each filled container. You may even wish to leave one container empty just for novelty.

 

Talk to your child about the different types of sounds you hear when the container is shaken.

 

Choose familiar songs to sing as you shake the different containers. You might sing some of them loudly or softly, in a high or a low voice. Let the sound help you decide what to do with your voice.

 

Ideas for taking this activity to the next level:

For building confidence – Shake each container and talk about how it sounds. Is it loud or soft? Is it light or heavy? Is it tinkley or thundering?

 

For developing the idea - Select a container and ask your child to select one also. Choose a familiar song and sing and shake together.

 

For moving for forward – Go outside with your child. Listen to the different sounds. Airplanes, birds, the wind and cars.

 

Products from Discount School Supply® that I recommend:

Wooden Wind Chimes - set of 12 (BREEZY)

Kitchen Bottle Collection - set of 5 (BOTTLES)

Big Mouth Animal Puppets - set of 8 (FUNPUP)

Brawny Tough Jingle Wrap - set of 10 (JBELLSET)

Gold Jingle Bells - 150 pieces (BELLS)

Cluster Bells (CLUS)

 

Exploring Texture with Infants

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
Babies need a variety of tactile experiences to become familiar with their world. An infant spends the majority of his first year of life learning through these tactile experiences.

Babies need touching experiences to “grow” the brain and “grow” the body. It is as critical as nutrients and vitamins.

Exploring texture is something that babies love to do. You can uses silky cloth, materials that are fuzzy, smooth, and furry.

Another lovely tactile experience is to take a hair dryer and blow gentle air on different parts of the baby’s body.

Here is a wonderful tactile game that you can play with your baby.

Using your index and middle fingers, gently tap on different parts of your infant’s body. As you tap, name the part of the body.

Use the following poem as a guide:

Tap, tap, tap
On my baby’s (or use baby’s name) cheek.
Tap, tap, tap
On my baby’s cheek. (take his hand and put it on his cheek)

Repeat this little poem, tapping on different parts of the body.

Ideas that take this activity to the next level:
For building confidence: Each time you tap a body part, clap your hands and shout “Hooray!”
For developing the idea: Reverse the game. Take your baby’s fingers and tap them on your body.
For moving forward: Play the game with a stuffed animal or doll.

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Through songs and fingerplays, many important skills can be taught which are vital in the development of the brain.

The following rhyme develops sensory perception and fine motor skills. Say the rhyme as you touch your baby’s fingers one by one. On the final verse, wave your baby’s hand.

Tommy ThumbTommy thumb, Tommy thumb,
Where are you?
Here I am, here I am.
How do you do! (wave baby’s hand)
Peter pointer, Peter pointer,
Where are you?
Here I am, here I am.
How do you do! (wave baby’s hand)

Continue on with Toby tall, Ruby ring, Sally small, and fingers all.

Your baby will respond to your touch and your voice.

Ideas that take this activity to the next level:
For building confidence: Each time you touch your baby, kiss the finger you are touching.
For developing the idea: Reverse the process. Put the baby’s hand on your fingers.
For moving forward: After you play the game, add the song “Where is Thumbkin” to play with the fingers.

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.

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.