Marilyn Lopes
Extension Specialist, Family Life Education
Cape Cod Extension
University of Massachusetts
Copyright/Access Information
It is important for parents and day care providers to help infants
with thinking and language skills. This is a time of tremendous
change in the physical, emotional, and intellectual development
of infants. Everything
infants learn sets the stage for later development!
- focus on and follow moving objects with their eyes.
- have different cries to express hunger, anger, and pain.
- babble, coo, and gurgle.
- turn to locate the source of sounds.
- study their hands and feet.
- forget about objects they cannot see.
- explore things by putting them in their mouth.
- make sounds like "dada" and "mama."
- repeat actions that cause a response - when given a rattle,
they will shake it and laugh.
- wave bye-bye and play pat-a-cake.
- look for things not in sight.
- begin to pretend by acting out familiar activities.
- respond to simple directions.
- make sounds that can be understood by people who know them well.
- may speak their first understandable words by 12 months.
- Hold, rock, and sing to young babies.
- Take them outside on nice days.
- Explain what you are doing throughout the day when you change
or feed them.
- Let young babies lie on a big piece of paper and hear the crunching
noise when they move.
- Play different kinds of music on the radio.
- Hang bright toys for babies to see and hear. Hang aluminum pie
plates on a string. Let a breeze blow them, or move them with
your hand.
- Give them soft toys - a stuffed animal or a clean sock - to
hold and feel.
- At their eye level, hang up big pictures of people and animals
on the wall.
- Have a clean space for babies to crawl. Put bright toys near
babies to reach out for or move toward. Put a big cardboard box
on the floor so babies can crawl inside and play.
- Put cushions on the floor so babies can bounce and roll on them.