Play to
Progress

Play What?

Floor time
for Babies

Floor time
for Toddlers

Q&A from
Wee Parents

Language
Skills
Checklist

Imagine that!

Cover Baby Contest

Wee Exercise Reading List

And speaking of Christmas shopping, we invite you to check out the many new products available in the Wee Exercise online store. Due to popular demand, we now offer the Wee Exercise roll for Tummy Time play, the Wee Exercise DVD and a Baby Shower Gift Basket, a great resource for new parents plus many more items. We've also discovered a new product that helps baby practice sitting skills. It's called the Bumbo Baby Seat, a product that's been a hit in South Africa and is now available for sale in the Wee Exercise Store.

Now read on, and we'll tell you how to play to progress with your child. Child development experts advise parents to spend at least 30 minutes daily playing on the floor with their child to boost cognitive and physical growth. The following is a list of ideas for multi-sensory play to maximize this floor time together from babyhood to toddler hood.

Play to progress!

A growing number of child development experts are alarmed by the lack of time and interest devoted to unstructured child's play in modern American culture. Here's why. A child's spontaneous, self-generated play has tremendous potential to actually enhance brain development and increase intelligence and academic ability. Unstructured play is a crucial foundation for developing creativity, intellect and emotional and social skills. In today's society, parents tend to focus more on learning by rote memory or concrete memorization with flash cards, letters or numbers but memorizing doesn't teach a child to think; play does. As a parent, you can exercise your child's brain and body by spending daily floor time with your child in imaginative play. It encourages your child to think and be creative. So get on the floor with your child and play to progress because all of the things you do with your infant add up to create an environment that maximizes baby's brain development and motor skills.

Play What? Activities for Daily Floor time (back to top)

There are many toys on the market today to captivate our infants and toddlers but if developmental play is what you have in mind for your infant's playtime, then consider the following list of developmental play ideas and toys/materials. As a Pediatric Occupational Therapist, I find the following toy types helpful in fostering physical and cognitive skills in children.

Floor time for Babies (back to top)
In baby's first year, tummy time is important for the development of upper body strength but unfortunately, babies aren't getting enough of it because they sleep on their backs. As a result babies often prefer that familiar position during waking hours. Also, many infant products place them on their backs. The following floor time activities incorporate lots of tummy time.

Birth to 6 Months
During the first months of life, your baby's sensory system is getting organized so stimulate that process by making a sensory mat of different textures and materials. Place your baby on this sensory quilt for daily tummy time and introduce toys and objects with different weights. Also, keep him amused on his tummy by reading poetry and playing different styles of music.

At an early age, play helps with an infant's physical development. Babies learn primarily through movement and their senses how to deal with gravity, keep their balance, to move their body through space, about time and the sequence of events.

6 to 9 Months
Place baby on the floor and give her a pan and spoon to make her own music. Then try to get your baby to use both hands to pick up objects. Show your baby how to put objects in a container.

9 to 12 Months
At this age, infants love to bang and make noises and put objects in a container. A great way to work on baby's fine motor skills during floortime is to have him pick up “O”s cereal and put them in a plastic cup to make a noise maker/shaker. Place the lid on the cup and let baby shake, shake shake! Also, infants begin to understand the concept of object permanence. So why not play with an object and then hide it under a blanket,etc.. under a cup, box and then find it with baby. Sing “Where oh, where has my little toy gone? Oh, where oh, where can it be?” to the tune of (Where oh where has my little dog gone?”) Then let baby practice his new crawling and pulling to stand skills by creating an create an obstacle course with couch cushions and let baby loose on an adventure.

Floor time for Toddlers (back to top)
Pretend play or make believe play helps a child begin to separate his or her thoughts from actions and lays the foundation for the abstract thought process. Abstract thought is important for many skills such as math, logic and creativity. The following activities are for toddlers age two years to four years.

Row Row Row your Box
Take a cardboard box and let your child sit in it pretending it's a boat. Let her be the boat's captain and you sit next to her as the boat's passenger. Pretend that you both are rowing a boat together and let her pretend steering the boat with imaginary oars turning left, right and going forward and backward. Talk about what you see on your boat ride and where you are going. Remember it's important in floor time to let your child take the lead in play and you follow. This activity works on her large motor skills and cognitive skills as imaginary play.

It's in the Bag!
Try this new twist on a game of catch by using beanbags instead of a ball. Start on the floor tossing the bean bag with your child then have him try catching it from different challenging positions such as laying down, standing up with one hand and then the other then with his shoulder, knee and a foot.

Bubbles and String
Break out the bubbles and string for small muscle development. Show your child how to blow bubbles and talk about how they look and feel. Then, give him a piece of yarn or thick string and show him how to string dried macaroni or cherrios.

Kangaroos and Wheel Barrows
Play wheelbarrow with your child by holding his legs while he walks with his hands along a marked route. Then play Kangaroo hopping in place with your child, hop forwards, backwards and side to side. Then try to make it more challenging by placing an ball between his knees. Hopping, skipping and climbing are all important to a child's growth patterns. Each activity calls upon various muscle groups.

Tunnel and Roll
Help your child build a crawling tunnel out of cushions and blankets and go on an imaginary journey with him in his pretend tunnel. Besides creeping through it, pretend you two are snakes wiggling and rolling around.

Q and A from Wee Parents (back to top)

If you have a question you want answered, submit it to Karen@weeexercise.com. If it's not selected to be answered in our newsletter, we will answer it personally.

What can I do to promote my toddler's language development? -Shanta Singh

Speak Up: How to Promote Childhood Chatter

Play is very important in language development because it creates many opportunities for comparing and contrasting, constructing sentences, turn-taking and problem solving. Research shows that the stimulation parents and caregivers provide in the first three years of life sets the stage for effective, productive communication skills that will last a lifetime. According to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, baby talk, the singsong voice that we use, actually helps foster language learning. Here are a few ideas to enhance your child's language skills:

• Read books and sing songs daily with repeated words and phrases
• Introduce new vocabulary in meaningful context such as naming foods at mealtime
• Speak directly to your child and let her respond
• Avoid finishing your child's sentences
• Play telephone with your child such as calling grandma
• Play the name game at the grocery store
• Pretend play and use it as an opportunity to teach turn-taking, ask questions and make comments rather than give directions and commands
• Use parallel talk to fill in gaps instead of correcting her. This will enhance your child's language skills

Language Skills Checklist: (back to top)

At 7 days old - A newborn can distinguish his mother's voice
At 2 weeks old - A newborn can distinguish her father's voice
At 3 months old - Baby can make vowel sounds
At 6 to 8 months old - Baby adds a few consonant sounds to the vowel sounds and may say "Mamma" or "Dada"
At 12 to 15 months old - Infants begin using their first words as they realize that words symbolize specific concepts and objects. They also will attach mamma or dada to the right person and can respond to one step commands.
At 15 to 18 months old - An infant begins to add gestures to her speech and may be able to follow two-step commands. Infants continue to string vowels and consonants together and tend to mix real words within the gibberish and may be able to say ten different words.
At 18 to 24 months old - At this age, a dramatic vocabulary spurt takes place as a toddler learns up to 9 new words each week. By now, he or she knows 30 to 100 words using them in simple sentences such as more juice and may ask repeatedly what's that?
At 2 years old - A child should be able to use 200 to 250 words. He or she can combine words forming simple sentences like "Daddy go. Between ages two and three, a child begins to manipulate grammatical rules and initiate conversations on the telephone and with anyone who will listen. Her receptive vocabulary, the number of words she understands, is much larger.
At 3 years old - A child can use sentences two to four words long, follow simple instructions and often repeat words he or she overhears.
At 4 years old - A child can understand most sentences and use sentences that are four or five words long. Four year olds can say their name, age, and sex and use pronouns. Also, strangers can understand a child's spoken language at this age.

Sensory note:

At age two and three, sensory integration is taking place and toddlers are learning to appreciate how certain sounds, smells, tastes and textures go together. At age three, most kids become aware of the difference between pleasant and foul odors so use everyday opportunities to explore senses such as smelling flowers, tasting new foods, and listening to different sounds.

Imagine That… Things that Make You Go Hmm?

A study by the University of Michigan says since late 1970's, children have lost 12 hours per week in free time including a 25 percent drop in play and a 50 percent drop in unstructured outdoor activities. Meanwhile time in structured sports has doubled. In addition, the amount of homework increased dramatically between 1981 and 1997 tripling for ages 6 to 8.

Cover Baby Contest Goes Monthly (back to top)

Before we say good-bye, we want to remind you to keep those baby pictures coming. We've received so many precious baby photos that we have decided to turn the quarterly cover baby contest into a monthly cover baby contest so check back with us monthly. Baby photos not selected for our "electronic cover page" will be posted on the Wee Exercise Baby Album online. To submit your baby's photo click here and be sure and include your child's first name, city and state and age.

Wee Exercise Reading List

For more information on the topics of developmental play and language, wee suggest the following books:

1. Discovering the Brain, Sandra Ackerman
2. Playground Politics, Stanley Greenspan
3. How Babies Talk, The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff Ph.D. , Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Ph.D.

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