As your baby reaches 3-6 months old, you’ll see her taking in the world around her with all her senses. She will want to get her hands on everything now that her motor abilities and sense of Initiative and Curiosity are growing. Initiative refers to your baby’s motivation to take the first step to do something,¹ while curiosity is her desire to learn or know more about something.² Because there is so much to experience and learn at this stage, your baby may be overwhelmed with all of the possibilities. If so, what can you do to best encourage her love of learning and curiosity at this age?

Brain science research shows that the play activities and toys you offer your baby should match her current interest level and stage of development for the best learning and development.³ Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky defines a child’s current stage of development as her “zone of proximal development,” the area of learning between what she is capable of doing on her own and what she can accomplish with the support of caregivers and peers who give her guided instruction and demonstration (scaffold learning).^4,5 Vygotsky believed that “what a child is able to do in collaboration today, [she] will be able to do independently tomorrow.”⁴

To scaffold your baby’s learning, try introducing new experiences and objects to her. If she does not know what to do, show her how to handle the experience or explore the new toys and objects. As she watches your actions and behaviors, she will eventually learn how to play with toys and build the self-confidence and initiative to explore new objects on her own.⁶ In the same way, letting her spend time with other children her age will help her learn how to play and socialize from the example of her peers.

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Don’t forget other attention-grabbing strategies you can use to spark your baby’s interest in exploring her environment. According to Jill Stamm’s Bright from the Start, she will naturally gravitate towards stimuli and experiences based on these factors:⁷

• Intensity: Your baby’s brain pays more attention to extremes (e.g. black vs. white) compared to middle-of-the range (red vs. pink). She will not only focus more on visual differences (e.g. sharp, bold images, and high-contrast colors), but also contrasts in sound (e.g. high and low pitches).
• Size: Similar to intensity, your baby will take more interest in very large or very small objects, but not the in-between. You may notice her squeal with excitement when she comes across a small chihuahua walking in the park or sees a large elephant at the zoo.
• Novelty: All brains are wired to take notice of anything novel because they have an inherent need to make sense of new stimuli. Your baby’s brain will study a new object, determine its safety or threat, and place it in a mental category based on her observations and newfound knowledge. Once she figures it out, her attention will quickly move onto the next new thing.
• Incongruity: Your baby will also take note of outliers, things that don’t fit the group or situation. For instance, she will likely pick the rubber duck out of a basket of round balls.
• Personal Significance: People naturally pay attention to things that they can personally relate to. While your baby is still too young to have developed her Self-Concept, you can still start developing her self-awareness by showing her pictures of herself, using her name often, and labeling her toys with her name.
• Emotion: To engage your baby, she must be emotionally capable of focusing and holding on to the new information or experience. She should be feeling positive, relaxed, and alert for optimal learning.

At this age, when your baby comes across an item that meets any of the factors above, she will try reaching for it, even if it’s just out of her reach. She will look at objects held in her hand for longer periods of time and experiment with them in a variety of ways, including shaking, throwing, mouthing, banging, pushing, pulling, and dropping to see what they will do. She may also hold out her hand for you to play with her. Be sure to support her Initiative and Curiosity now by focusing on activities that are within her stage of development and are naturally interesting to her.

Play Tips:

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

1. Play with your baby! Children learn through personal exploration, but also through observation.⁶ How many of us have beeped a child’s nose only to be immediately beeped back? Watching how you handle and manipulate objects is a great way for your baby to become familiar with everything an object has to offer.
2. Provide a safe play area for your baby to freely explore. With her growing curiosity and sense of adventure, she will want to explore every nook and cranny she can access. Be proactive in planning areas of exploration and child-proofing other areas that are off-limits to your baby. In her safe play area, be sure to make it easy for her to explore (e.g. bottom drawers and cabinets, or boxes on the floor) and fill it up with age-appropriate objects that are clean and safe to mouth and handle (e.g. spatula, plastic bowls, wooden spoons, pots, and pans).
3. Offer interesting toys and place them just beyond her reach. Capture your baby’s attention by showing her an interesting toy or object. Model its use slowly and place it just beyond her reach. Then encourage her to reach for the toy and explore it. Be sure to rotate through toys because novelty is one of the keys to capturing her curiosity and initiative.⁷ Do not use toys or objects that may be unsafe to mouth and handle or can become potential choking hazards.⁸
4. Keep a wide variety of tactile toys and objects to play with.⁹ Because your baby is still learning mostly through sensory exploration, offer her a variety of objects made of different materials and textures to play with, including containers with different-sized blocks, large wooden beads, stuffed animals, and baby utensils. To avoid boredom, avoid offering “one-trick pony” toys, such as simple “one-press button, electronic toys” and do consider offering objects that can be used in a variety of ways. Building blocks are a good example, since they can be made into towers, dropped onto the floor, and placed in and dumped out of containers.

(SPECIAL OFFER: Sign up for Playful Bee’s Bee Well developmental learning program to give your baby the best start in life. The first 10,000 children enroll for FREE! Sign up today.)

Developmental Milestones:

Has your baby achieved the following Initiative and Curiosity 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!

• Acts on curiosity by grabbing towards out-of-reach objects.

Sources:

¹Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Initiative. An Encyclopedia Britannica Company: Merriam-Webster. Retrieved March 4, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/initiative.

²Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Curiosity. An Encyclopedia Britannica Company: Merriam-Webster. Retrieved March 4, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curiosity.

³Gellens, Suzanne R. (2013). Building Brains. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.

⁴Liu, Angela (2012). Teaching in the Zone: An introduction to working within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to drive effective early childhood instruction. Children’s Progress. Retrieved January 22, 2014, from http://www.childrensprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/free-white-paper-vygotsky-zone-of-proximal-development-zpd-early-childhood.pdf.

⁵Mooney, Carol Garhart (2000). Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky. St Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.

⁶Bandura, Albert (1971). Social Learning Theory. New York, NY: General Learning Press. Retrieved February 27, 2014, from http://www.jku.at/org/content/e54521/e54528/e54529/e178059/Bandura_SocialLearningTheory_ger.pdf.

⁷Stamm, Jill and Spencer, Paula (2007). Bright from the Start. New York, NY: Gotham Books.

⁸Maryland State Department of Education (2010). Healthy Beginnings: Supporting Development and Learning from Birth through Three Years of Age.

⁹Connecticut Department of Social Services. Connecticut’s Guidelines for the Development of Infant and Toddler Early Learning.

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Playful Bee

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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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