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 […]
When Will My Baby Smile at Me? The Social Skill That Starts a Relationship For weeks, you have fed them, held them, changed them, worried about them and watched them sleep when you should probably have been sleeping too. You have given your baby almost everything you have, often on very little rest, and received […]
How to Help Your Baby Develop Fine Motor Skills Through Play Your baby reaches determinedly towards a sensory prop, grabs it with their whole hand and immediately puts it in their mouth. It might not look particularly sophisticated, especially when the prop then gets dropped, retrieved and dropped again. However, an extraordinary amount of development […]
Bank Holiday with a Baby: Why Parents Need a Village Before having children, a bank holiday often meant a lie-in, a spontaneous day out or the delicious feeling that Sunday had somehow been granted an encore. Then you become a parent. A bank holiday with a baby can look remarkably similar to every other Monday. […]
