Quick and Easy Play Ideas for 6-Month-Old Babies
How can parents or caregivers increase their 6-month-old baby’s awareness of sound, speech, visual development, or hand-eye coordination?
What happens in a baby’s brain?
Imagine what babies have learned by the time they are 6 months old! A baby’s brain is constantly developing. Brain research always intrigues me. Check out this video, created by TED videos, about how babies react to language. To paraphrase Patricia Kuhl, “Using the modern tools of neuroscience, what happens inside a baby’s brain is nothing short of Rocket Science.”
Try some of these activities with your 6-month-old baby:
- Picture read, read board books or tell stories with your 6-9-month-old baby! Talk about the story.
- Let your child open a gift or a wrapped article. It could be a task to discover a favorite toy… just getting inside the package requires fine motor control!
- Present toys with cylinders and dials that whirl and spin and make noise!
- Play with pop-up toys. Watch your 6-month-old as he/she giggles in anticipation. (If your child is sensitive to this activity, try again at another time.)
- Find a ball! Roll a ball behind a chair, around the child, or back and forth! Let your baby watch as you hide the ball. Can she find it?
- Get bubbles! Catch a bubble.
- Dump objects from a pail and watch him search the objects for a toy.
- Make shakers or play with rattles. This develops a sense of cause and effect… When I shake it or roll it … it makes noise!
- Use a flashlight and spot objects with it. Where did the light go?
By nine months of age, your baby will reach for a book, push and pull, recognize common words, may stand with support, likes to copy sounds, can clap his hands together, and likes to explore the world around him! You can play games like pat-a-cake and give your baby a rattle to shake to the music. He will love to hear a favorite book read over and over again! Enjoy holding him close and dancing to the music!
NOTE: You might find Thinking and Play: Babies interesting.
Great Board Books for a 6-month-old baby!
- Baby, I Love You by Karma Wilson
- Rainbow Colors Peekaboo by DK Publishing
- Oh My, Oh My, Oh Dinosaurs by Sandra Boynton
- Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins
- Barnyard Dance! by Sandra Boynton
- Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell
