Appropriate Play and Toys

Hold your older baby's attention by offering toys with moving parts, such as wheels, levers or doors that open and close, or roll a ball to your baby when you are playing on the floor and see if she rolls it back!

The First 6 months
Appropriate Play and Toys: 7-9 Months
Appropriate Play and Toys: 10-12 months

Appropriate Play and Toys: 1-3 Months
The shops are packed with developmental toys, but everyday household objects are great too. The sound of a doorbell, wind chimes, a ticking clock and even your washing machine will amuse your baby.

Try singing nursery rhymes, or playing music to her. Stimulate your baby's sense of touch with materials such as fake fur, tissue, felt, and paper, or look for books that make touching a part of the reading experience. The more different things you can offer her, the greater the impact will be.

Touching, carrying, and massaging your baby, are great ways to relax her and may even increase her alertness and attention span.

Once in a while, put her on her tummy, as lifting her head and chest to see you or her toys will strengthen her neck muscles. Hang mobiles to the side rather than directly overhead so she can practice reaching and hitting out. A floor gym is useful at this age.

Choose board books with large, bright pictures and simple text or even wordless books with pictures for you to talk about. Verbal stimulation is particularly important for your baby, so engage her with a variety of words and sounds.

Talk to her about everyday things, as you shop or walk through the park point to objects and identify them by name. Even if you do feel silly it's great for her and even though she can't repeat these words yet she's storing all the information in her rapidly developing memory.

A baby in a bilingual home will get double the language training if she regularly hears both languages spoken. It's often easiest if one parent always speaks English and the other parent always speaks the foreign language with her.

Appropriate Play and Toys: 4-6 months
You can encourage your baby's talking by babbling back, or by listening as if you understand everything she says and find it extremely interesting. Read aloud too, looking at the bright pictures and snuggling on your knee is lovely for both parent and baby.

You can help your baby get ready to sit by encouraging her to play face down on the floor and then prompting her to look up. This helps strengthen her neck muscles and develops the head control necessary for sitting up. You can also prop her up using cushions and pillows and do this in differing places throughout the house to give her a range of interesting views but always make sure you stay with her and that she is in a safe place.

Once your baby can sit fairly well, put toys and other intriguing objects just out of her reach, they'll hold her attention as she learns to balance herself with her arms.

Your baby uses all of her senses to explore and learn about her world so ensure she has lots of safe things around to touch, mouth and manipulate. She'll enjoy squeezing a soft rubber ball, shaking a rattle, stroking fake fur, and chewing on a chilled teething ring.

An activity centre or gym is a good toy for this stage, as your baby can begin to discover the cause and effect of moving a lever and hearing a bell ring, for example. Babies of this age also adore bubbles being blown into a glass of water.

To stimulate her pincer grasp let her pick up finger foods such as peas and carrots. Encourage crawling by placing toys or yourself just beyond your baby's reach. Create an obstacle course using pillows, boxes, and sofa cushions for her to negotiate, helping her confidence, speed, and agility. All the time praising her abilities and never leaving her alone.

The idea that you do something to an object is beginning to emerge, so an activity centre with lots of things your baby can bang, poke, twist, squeeze, shake, drop, and open will fascinate her. She'll enjoy putting objects in a container and removing them.

She also likes toys with moving parts, such as wheels, levers, or doors that open and close. Big plastic cars that your baby can roll around on the floor are fun playthings for both boys and girls. Try rolling a ball to your baby when you're playing on the floor and see if she rolls it back to you as some nine-month-olds enjoy these passing games.

Give her a sorting toy or stacking rings and see if she sorts or stacks or hands the pieces to you.

This age group also like to see things fall down, get picked up (by you), and then get thrown down again. Your baby isn't trying to goad you with this cycle, she just finds the spectacle interesting and naturally wants to see it again and again because she likes predictability.

Although very popular with this age group baby walkers are not recommended and generally discouraged by most health professionals as they don't allow a baby's hip and thigh muscles to develop correctly. If you do have one then limit your baby's time in it to just 20 minutes or so a day and make sure she has plenty of other opportunities to practise her walking skills. Stand or kneel in front of her and, whilst holding both her hands, walk her towards you.

A push-along toy can be a good idea such as those that contain wooden bricks, for example, but anything that is stable has a wide base of support and a good height for her to easily push will do the trick. She'll also love filling and emptying the truck of bricks and, if you pile them high, she'll love to demolish your tower.

You can also hold off on introducing shoes until your baby is walking around outside or on rough or cold surfaces regularly. Going barefoot helps her improve her co-ordination and balance. Your baby will probably lose her balance and get herself into tricky positions sometimes, when she gets stuck help her correct herself rather than just picking her up and putting her right again.

She'll probably still enjoy playing with small objects to master her pincer grip but will also enjoy exercising larger muscles. She'll enjoy knocking down a stack of bricks, rolling a ball etc.

Continue to read stories and sing nursery rhymes. Action songs are great too as they add meaning to the words.