More Than Eating: How Weaning Builds Your Baby’s Skills There comes a point during weaning when you look at your baby, then at the floor, then at the food you were fairly sure was supposed to go inside them. Somehow, a carefully prepared lunch has become an experiment involving a piece of broccoli, one […]
Do Babies Who Hear More Stories Learn to Talk Earlier? You’re reading Dear Zoo for approximately the 147th time. Your baby has eaten the corner, skipped three pages, grabbed your face and wandered off mentally halfway through the elephant. It may not feel like a particularly sophisticated literacy session. But something much more interesting […]
Making Mum Friends When Everyone Else Already Looks Settled There’s a particular kind of courage involved in walking into a baby or toddler class on your own for the first time. You’re carrying a baby, an enormous bag containing everything except the one thing you’ll actually need, and possibly a coffee you haven’t managed […]
Why Do Babies Need Sensory Play? (And Does Everything Have to End Up in Their Mouth?) At some point during maternity leave, you may find yourself sitting on the floor watching your baby completely ignore the beautiful developmental toy you carefully chose while they enthusiastically lick the label on a muslin. Welcome to sensory […]
Pointing, Waving and Reaching: The Gestures Before First Words There’s a lovely moment in your baby’s first year when they spot something interesting across the room, stretch out a tiny finger and point. You look. They look at you. Then they look back at the thing. It might be the dog, a light, a […]
Where Did It Go? How Babies Discover Object Permanence Hide your face behind your hands, wait for a moment, then reappear. To an adult, absolutely nothing remarkable has happened. To a baby, however, games like this are part of a much bigger discovery about how the world works: things can disappear from view without […]
Your Baby’s First Autumn: Simple Sensory Adventures for Cooler Days There’s something unexpectedly lovely about experiencing autumn with a baby for the first time. You might have spent previous Septembers noticing that it was getting dark earlier and wondering whether it was socially acceptable to put the heating on yet. This year, there’s a […]
The Best Thing in Your Baby Class Might Not Be the Activity You arrive at a baby class and there’s a lot to look at. Perhaps there’s a beautiful sensory tray, puppets popping out of a story, bubbles floating overhead or something wonderfully messy that you’re already calculating the chances of getting out of […]
Can Reading to Your Baby Strengthen Your Bond? The Story Starts Long Before They Understand the Words There are some parts of having a baby that don’t look quite like the version you imagined. You pictured peaceful cuddles. Your baby occasionally has other ideas. You pictured gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes. They’re staring […]
