Your Sensational Twelve-Month Old

As your baby approaches twelve months they are going to love experimenting with new sensations. These new sensations can include wet, slimy gelatin; cold, hard ice cubes; loud noises; soft noises; or many other things that your baby can explore and discover that they haven’t found yet on their own. As a parent, you are going to need to help your baby explore as many of these things as possible by stimulating their senses. Getting your baby’s senses stimulated is one of the best things you can do to help your baby develop properly. Your baby is going to learn through playing, feeling, hearing, seeing, smelling, and tasting. The more experiences you offer your baby the more they are going to learn.

Here are the steps that you can follow to help simulate some of your baby’s senses.

Step One: Sight

Make sure that your child has a variety of books to choose from. Spend time reading to your baby every day. You can read the same book to your baby each day or you can read them a variety of books. By reading to your baby, you will help your baby learn about language, plus how it is used in society. You also need to allow your baby to turn the pages or feel the pages of the books.

Step Two: Sound

Introduce your baby to different types of music. What music you introduce your baby to will depend on what music you enjoy. Keep in mind that the bigger the variety, the more music she might enjoy later on in life. One of the best places to listen to music is in the car or at night when everybody is relaxing. You can also play soft music at night while your baby is going to sleep. In certain cases, you want to think about the music that you are playing to ensure that it is appropriate for the situation.

Step Three: Touch

You can teach your baby about matching by playing matching games with them on the floor. One thing you can do is place numerous pairs of shoes on the floor. Give your baby one of the shoes and see if they can find the match to that one. When doing this be sure to encourage your baby by using words and praising them when they get the right match.

Step Four: Sight and Sound

Give your baby a cardboard roll from the middle of wrapping paper. You can have your baby use the roll as a way to push balls along the floor. You can also give your baby paper towel rolls and show them how to use it to look through or to talk through. Babies love to make as much noise as they can and these tubes provide a better way to make noise,

Step Five: Touch

Bring out a bunch of cardboard boxes and allow your baby to play with them. You can turn the cardboard boxes into cars and push your baby around or have your baby push their dolls or stuffed animals around. You can turn them into houses, if they are big enough. You can do many things with cardboard boxes if you use your imagination.

Step Six: Touch

Give your baby a toy that they can push along the floor to see if they can do it. Once they have done that, tie a string to it and change the game to pulling the toy along the floor.

Step Seven: Sound

Dance and clap together. Your baby will soon learn how to clap her hands. Play some music and clap along. You can also dance and clap.