When your baby was first born, you saw her using a lot of instinctive actions.¹ Babies start off learning about their world by using these involuntary reflexes, which are automatic responses to stimulation.² Your baby was born with many natural abilities, including blinking her eyes, turning her head towards mom’s nipple (rooting), sucking, paddling and kicking in water (swimming), startling in reaction to sudden stimuli (moro reflex), grasping your fingers (palmer grasp), “walking” with support (stepping), and lying in a “fencer position,” with her head turned toward an extended arm and the other arm flexed (tonic neck reflex).³ These inborn reflexes are important to your baby’s early survival and are often stepping stones to later developmental milestones.

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Over time these involuntary behaviors will be replaced by purposeful actions. By 4 months, your baby will lose the reflexes of sucking, palmer grasp, and tonic neck, because she’ll be able to decide when to suck on her fingers for comfort and pleasure, hold and explore objects, and intentionally reach out with one arm.³

Modern brain science shows that although many life-sustaining functions and reflexes of the body, such as breathing, digestion, and eye blinking, are hardwired before birth, all other responses are actually learned and become hardwired in the brain through repeated experiences.⁴ Before birth, your baby’s brain is already starting to form connections from receptors in the eyes, nose, mouth, skin, and ears to the areas of the brain used for the senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.⁵ This process continues to develop and strengthen after birth every time she is exposed to sensory stimuli and experiences⁵. The more rich sensory experiences your baby has, the stronger her abilities will develop by activating and strengthening these neural pathways.^4,5

While experiences and sensations will deliver sensory information to your baby’s brain, the brain must still learn to recognize and make sense of what is being experienced. For her to boost her perceptual development, which is the processing of sensory information, she needs to explore sensations in a variety of ways, creating meaning by understanding the root cause or source of the sensation.^1,5 For instance, since your baby can recognize the smell of her favorite blanket from everyday use, the familiar smell of it gives her comfort and a feeling of safety.

As her sensory abilities improve, your 3-6 month old baby will move with greater purpose and become more interested in her immediate surroundings. Because her vision is more developed, she’ll be able to focus on objects located further away (12″ or more), visually track objects easily, and see the full color spectrum. She will also start becoming interested in imitating your actions, such as waving bye-bye and blowing kisses to you.⁶

Take the opportunity to jump start her learning by exposing her to a variety of rich sensory experiences and stimuli every day! Engage your baby in active play time, including the physical exploration of new objects, reading books together, looking at moving objects (e.g. dogs at the park, fish swimming in the aquarium, birds flying in the air), and talking to her while meeting each others’ gaze. Because motor exercises help boost brain development,⁹ be sure to do a variety of movement activities with her as well as repeated actions and behaviors.

Play Tips:

Do you want to know how you can support your baby’s development of Sensory Exploration skills at this age? It’s easy! Read on for some simple tips to incorporate into your daily play time together.

1. Allow your baby a greater range of motion. Don’t get into the habit of placing your infant in a car seat or infant bouncer for the majority of her waking hours. Give her plenty of time to move around freely on a blanket or floor mat, both on her tummy and on her back. Place various toys near her to encourage reaching and grasping behaviors.^1,8 Play music and move your baby’s arms, legs, and hips to the rhythm of the music to coordinate how she moves with what she hears.
2. Show your baby a variety of colorful books and images. At this age, your baby will be more drawn to bright, bold colors with sharp contrasts and outlines than soft, pale images. Consider focusing on books using primary colors and simple shapes, rather than pastel watercolor illustrations.
3. Point out interesting objects that are nearby. Show your baby what you see and help her visually track your gaze or finger to locate the object. Then, name the object to reinforce what she sees. This will help her develop her ability to see, understand and put a name to what she sees, and improve her visual tracking and attention skills.
4. Model a variety of facial expressions and body gestures for your baby to imitate.⁶ Be sure to make your facial expressions and gestures big and exaggerated. Take your time in making your faces, so that she can watch the way your facial muscles move into new expressions. Move your fingers, your hands, and your tongue in large motions for your infant to see. Try showing different emotions, including happy, sad, silly, and surprised. This practice will also help build your baby’s knowledge of feelings and other social emotional skills.

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Developmental Milestones:

Has your baby achieved the following Sensory Exploration developmental milestones yet? If yes, check off all the skill(s) he has already mastered to date using Playful Bee’s developmental milestones tracker. It’s absolutely FREE and easy to use, just click HERE!

• Looks at things that are nearby. Sees objects 12″+ away.
• Develops full color vision. Shows preference for objects of certain colors, especially bold colors.

Sources:

¹Early Steps: Louisiana’s Early Intervention System (2005). Louisiana’s Early Learning Guidelines and Program Standards: Birth through Three.

²Berk, Laura E. (2010). Exploring Lifespan Development. Boston, MA: Alyn & Bacon.

³Santrock, John W. (2010). Life-Span Development. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

⁴Zero to Three (2011). FAQ’s on the Brain. Zero to Three: National Center on Infants, Toddlers, and Families. Retrieved January 14, 2014, from http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/brain-development/faqs-on-the-brain.html.

⁵Gellens, Suzanne R. (2013). Building Brains. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.

⁶Maryland State Department of Education (2010). Healthy Beginnings: Supporting Development and Learning from Birth through Three Years of Age.

⁷Gabbard, Carl and Rodrigues, Luis (2007). Optimizing Early Brain and Motor Development through Movement. Early Childhood News. Retrieved March 17, 2014, from http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=360.

⁸First Things First and Arizona Department of Education. Arizona’s Infant and Toddler Developmental Guidelines.

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Playful Bee

Education Team at Playful Bee

Playful Bee is an e-Preschool that delivers inquiry-based preschool learning from the classroom to your home. Our preschool curriculum was created by our talented team of rock star teachers. With years of hands-on preschool and Kindergarten teaching experience, they've developed a high-quality preschool experience that is convenient-to-use and easy-to-teach by you, grandparents, or your nanny at home.

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