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Toys for Developing Skills - Stimulating Senses

How Do Babies Senses Develop?

Your baby is interested in learning about the world as soon as she is born. She has been listening to the world from an extremely cosseted environment for about the last four months of the pregnancy.

Over the next four months your baby will be developing five senses – hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. Helping to develop your baby's senses will help her make sense of the world – the senses will eventually lead to baby being able to do things like reading, writing and counting.

In the first week she will recognise her mummy's voice and in the first few weeks will show a preference for familiar voices. Research indicates that in the first few weeks of life, a baby's senses are tuned to her mother - a newborn baby is able to see only as far as her mummy's face when she is feeding and becomes accustomed to her mummy's smell.

Baby's senses are initially attuned to those needed for survival with all other senses developing over the next few months.

How Can You Help Your Baby to Develop Senses?

Toys that encourage your baby to look, listen and touch are great for helping your baby to understand more about her environment. For every experience baby has a new pathway is signalled to her brain. And the more her experiences are reinforced the faster she will develop her senses.

Initially baby has quite a hazy vision so she will be interested in toys with visual contrasts – black and white toys tend to be of most interest to the younger baby. Colour definition does not come into play for some weeks. As baby experiences more and more colours, her perception begins to improve and she can start to differentiate hues of colour as well as stark contrasting colours.

Baby can hear from birth but needs help in distinguishing the sounds that she hears. It is best to keep the home environment as free from noise as possible to give baby the best chance of differentiating noises.

Choose your time to play with baby carefully. Baby is most interested in new things when she is not tired or hungry. Your role as a parent is to make sure you do not over stimulate your baby's senses.

Consider selecting toys that offer your baby the chance of multi-sensory discovery.

What Kinds of Toys Can Help You to Develop Your Baby's Senses?

A young baby will respond to soft fabrics and different textures. Taggies produces a range of baby toys that will awaken baby's senses. Taggies' soft fleecy toys edged with different textured tags will intrigue a young baby.

Lamaze designs its young baby toy products around awakening the senses, and has a range of toys suitable for the younger baby.

Tiny Love offers a range of toys that offer contrasting colours, music and movement to enhance baby's sensory experiences. Tiny Love's “Symphony in Motion Mobile” and “Gymini Playgym” will have babies discovering their senses for months.

Whoozit produces fun characters that are full of fascinating bits for a baby. Strong contrasting colours and big faces intrigue babies.

Mothercare offers a “Farm Animals Texture Book” which is suitable for use from birth. Once baby begins to touch with her hands she will enjoy the crinkly noises and soft fabrics.

After three months baby will start to bring objects to her mouth for a complete multi-sensory experience so make sure that any toys you buy are suitable for her to chew.

To find out more about what to look out for when choosing and buying nursery toys visit our How to Choose and Buy a Baby Toy for Different Ages section and our Brands section.

To find out more about the different types of nursery toy that are available for each age group visit our Types of Nursery Toy section.

To find out more about the different online baby and nursery toy shops and stores visit our Top Sites section.

You can also find out more in our How to Play with Baby section.