As soon as the baby is born, it will be surrounded with toys by grandmothers, aunts, and close friends.
And you as a parent will buy lots of toys that will primarily appeal to you.
Your newborn child’s world will be filled with a toy.
But are all these toys appropriate to your child’s age?
Every time a family gets a new member, they are all busy and happy, and buy everything in order for the new member to feel happily.
As a new parent, it’s hard to know what kind of toys your child likes. Of course you will read and be informed, but each child can react differently to the given toy.
From birth to the second year, toys are primarily used to stimulate and improve the psychological development of a child.
But in order to have that effect, the toys must be adapted to the child’s age. Otherwise they will have no influence.
In the first few months of development, as we have already said, toys stimulate the child’s mental development and later play a major role in improving your child’s social skills.
Your child will have many wonderful toys and of course, you as parents, would love to give it all these toys.
But, do not let the conscience bother you because those toys will have no effect until the child grows up enough to play with them.
This post offers a toy list for the first year of your child’s life.
0-1 Months
Believe it or not, in these first days of your child’s life, you will be its first toy.
Surprisingly right!
But all babies after birth are most attracted by the human face.
In the first few weeks, they will begin to react to familiar faces, and mostly its mother’s face.
Whenever they see “the favorite person” they will start laughing.
1-2 Months
At this age, babies watch only objects in motion and objects in color.
The best toy for this age is a baby gym.
For start, you need a simple baby gym where you can attach more toys.
In this early development, infants see only objects with high contrast.
Therefore, baby gym must be colorful, and high contrast.
Lay the baby on the back, and set the toys closer to its eyes and hands.
It will stimulate the coordinated movement of the hands.
You can place the toys in different positions.
Put the toys in the middle, it will cause both hands to move to the middle. Or sideways it will stimulate rolling to the side in order to grab the object.
These are very important skills for the early development of a baby.
With baby gym infants will learn to:
- Coordinate hands
- Catch
- Roll
- Perception
2-3 Months
During this period your baby is sufficiently grown to play with a small soft ball or a Baby Rattle.
Of course, these toys should be properly selected so that playing with them has an effect.
Baby rattles must have a handle, and be 5 centimeters in diameter.
It is also recommended that your baby’s first rattles be in red or white color.
The ball must be soft and about 10 centimeters in diameter.
It would be nice to have the first ball in black and white, or in combination of spectrum colors like red, yellow, green and blue.
It’s because babies see contrast and not colors.
4-5 months
At this age, the cubes and mirrors are perfect toys for your baby.
You will surely wonder why mirrors?
The mirror will foster the curiosity of the baby.
Babies adore to look in the mirror and play with their reflection.
But they like to touch it, so it’s best to have the mirror made of plastic for the safety of your baby.
Mirrors can also be used for motivation as well as for developing certain skills such as tummy play, head control, social emotional skills, and self-awareness.
The cubes can also be important during this development period.
They will allow baby’s hands to adapt to the shape of the object they hold.
It is recommended that the first cubes are all in the same shape.
The cubes will also stimulate the intellectual development of your baby.
6-7 Months
It’s a time for a book now!
In this period of development, it is very important to include a book.
Babies are aware of where the sound comes from, and they are turning in that direction.
So a book that flakes a long time will keep their attention.
Lay next to your baby, and travel with the book with lots of contrasting colors.
Another way is to keep the book close to your baby’s eyes, and it would be nice to turn on the book by letting it list the pages.
The benefit of this is developing your baby’s motor skills.
The best books are books that have many contrasting colors, and fields that your child can open and close.
During these months, it’s very important to start reading to your baby.
Choose a book with lots of rhymes and phrases that are often repeated.
Or sit your child and let him enjoy its book in his own way.
With the help of books, the following skills will be developed:
- Tummy play
- Midline play sitting
- Reaching
- Visual scanning
- Turning pages
- Joint attention
- Pointing
8-9 Months
This is the period when babies begin to use their feet or begin to walk. They will be increasingly interested in moving toys.
For example, a toy recommended for this age is Play tables with removable legs.
With the help of these interactive tables, your child will learn to stand and use its legs.
When your child is better off standing on his feet, freely remove two legs from the table.
In this way, your child will learn to maintain a balance.
Also, good toys are cars that will undoubtedly keep your child’s attention and allow a child to be active.
That’s because physical activity in this period is a very important factor for the proper development of your baby’s limbs.
Also balls are perfect toys for this period of development.
9-12 Months
During this period your child is already ready for “more serious toys”.
After learning how to use feet and hands, your child is ready to play with larger toys.
Now your child will be able to catch toys of different sizes, shape and color, to press buttons, turn them around and so on.
Now you can already give bigger and bigger cubes, bigger cars, boxes and more.
During this period, your child will especially enjoy collecting toys in a box and re-extracting them.
In this way, it will learn what is bigger and what is smaller and how to transfer toys from one place to another.
LAST WORDS
We hope that through this text we have partially helped you to choose the toys for your child according to his age.
If so, the pleasure is ours.
