Stimulate your baby: three to six months
Welcome to the incredible journey of parenthood! These early months are filled with so much wonder and discovery for both you and your baby. Below, you’ll find simple and loving ways to encourage your baby’s development and bonding. Each activity is designed to nurture their growth in key areas: seeing and looking, hearing and talking, touching and feeling, movement and motor development.
An important Reminder: Babies can become overstimulated. If your little one turns away, starts fussing or looks agitated, that’s their way of saying they need a break. Pause, speak gently and help them return to a calm state.
Part 1: Seeing and Looking
What your baby is learning:
At this stage, your baby's vision and focus are now improving rapidly and by 6 months their vision will be clear and sharp.
During this stage, babies learn to focus on small objects and objects further away. Their eyes move together and babies are now able to look at a toy in their hands and see their hands as they reach for the toy. Babies are now able to follow objects smoothly with their eyes up and down and from side to side. Your baby is still fascinated by faces and begins to recognize familiar people.
Activities to Support this:
· Move toys from side to side and up and down and backward and forward to strengthen your baby’s eye muscles and practice smooth eye movements.
· Your baby watches you moving about which helps develop their eye movements.
· Playing peek-a-boo games is such a fun way to help your baby practice focusing.
· Using mobiles with smaller and larger toys is a fun way of captivating your baby's visual attention.
· A light beam from a torch in a dark area can be fun for your baby to practice eye movements
Part 2: Hearing and Talking
What your baby is learning:
Babies are becoming more and more aware of and interested in the sounds around them, trying to focus and find out where they come from and what they mean. With improved head and body control, they are now able to turn their heads to locate the sound. They are also learning social interaction skills at this stage. They are interested and responsive to people. They respond with sounds and babble, back-and-forth conversations. They begin experimenting with various sounds, making different sounds and listening to themselves. Laughing and squealing are common sounds at this stage. Babies at this stage start to use consonant sounds such as the “ca” and “da” sounds. They may start to grunt or growl and imitate sounds like coughing and blowing bubbles.
Activities to Support this:
· Spend time talking to babies, imitating their sounds and facial expressions and giving them a chance to respond. This is so important for the development of language and social skills.
· Label body parts. While bathing, dressing or playing with your baby to teach body awareness.
· Read to your baby. This stimulates language and teaches babies that words have meaning.
· Rhymes and songs provide a fun way to stimulate your baby's language.
· Play classical or gentle music to your baby as it is organising and calming for you and your baby.
Part 3: Touching and holding
What your baby is learning:
Babies develop eye-hand coordination by learning to judge distances and reach for objects accurately. They start by bringing their hands together, looking at them and playing with their fingers. This helps them coordinate their eyes and hands eventually allowing them to grasp and hold objects in the mid-line.
As they see and feel a toy, they become motivated to reach, swipe and trap it. Over time, they gain better control, deliberately holding objects and bringing them to their mouths to explore. By around six months, they may start passing objects between their hands but cannot yet voluntarily let go.
Activities to Support this:
· Provide Textured Toys - Offer a variety of toys with different textures to enhance your baby’s sense of touch and encourage exploration.
· Use Engaging Objects - Give your baby toys of various shapes, sizes and textures, including smaller ones they can easily hold. Noisy toys, like rattles, are especially fun as babies learn that their movements create sounds.
· Incorporate Massage - Gentle massage helps improve body awareness, strengthens bonding and supports emotional well-being.
Part 4: Movement and Motor Development
What your baby is learning:
At this stage, babies are learning to lift their heads and support themselves on their forearms while lying on their tummies. By around 6 months, they can usually push up with straighter arms on their own.
When lying on their backs, babies often kick their legs strongly, with the soles of their feet rubbing together. They also bring their hands up against gravity to touch in the middle of their bodies.
Early on, babies start rolling into and out of a side-lying position. As they get stronger, they learn to roll from their tummies onto their backs. By about six months, many babies can roll from their backs onto their tummies as well.
At the beginning of this stage, babies need full support to sit, as their trunk and back muscles are still developing. As they grow stronger, they need less support and by the end of this stage some may be able to sit up on their own.
Babies now enjoy being moved around which lets them feel their heads in different positions. This movement makes them feel good and also helps build muscle control and balance. These skills are important for learning to do bigger movements later, like climbing and swinging.
Activities to Support this:
· Tummy time is very important. It helps strengthen your baby’s back, neck and arms and gets them ready to crawl. Watch your baby’s cues, even short tummy time sessions are helpful and they’ll let you know when they’ve had enough.
· Lying on their back and kicking helps build tummy muscles. You can also gently help your baby move from lying to sitting. These activities strengthen the core which is important for rolling and crawling.
· Support your baby in sitting. As they get stronger, slowly reduce the support so they can practice sitting on their own.
· Try different kinds of movement. Carry your baby in different positions, dance with them and gently tilt or bounce them. These movements help your baby feel their head in different positions and build balance and body control in a safe and fun way.
Enjoy these moments!
Every baby grows at their own pace, so celebrate the little milestones along the way. Your love, presence and playful interactions are the most important part of their development. Trust your instincts, follow their cues and treasure these early months. 💕
Special thanks to Occupational Therapist Kate Baily and her work, Making Sense of My World.