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Choosing the Right Camp For Your Kid
Camps have long been a rite of passage for children. It's never too early to research productive and fun activities for our kids. These explorations help develop confidence in our children. Here is a Top 10 checklist to get started. Find...
Five Low Fat Holiday Party Appetizers
Holiday foods are about different kinds of flavors that satisfy
your taste buds. Here are some food picks - healthy,
low fat, all easy to make:
1. Marmalade, apple butter, or whole fruit preserves served on
low fat crackers with slices of...
Goal Setting for Kids
Goal setting is essential for building a successful life. However, teaching kids how to set and achieve goals is not part of most school curriculums, nor is it taught in most homes. Many parents never learned the techniques of goal setting, and...
How To Use An Online Catering Service
The next time you have a party, save yourself the time and trouble of agonizing over appetizers by buying all your hors d'oeuvres online. They’ll think you hired an expensive caterer or spent weeks slaving over a hot stove! Your munchies can make...
Surprising Health Benefits for Pet Owners
Did you know that there are key health benefits that can result from owning a pet? Having one can enhance your physical, mental and social wellbeing.
1. How can a pet help your physical health?
Owning a dog, for instance, will encourage you to...
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Developing Your Baby's Brain
Have you ever wondered why toys for babies tend to have so many bells, whistles and lights? Or why they have so many different textures, and materials and colors?
It's almost as if we want to provide young babies with a whole world of stimulation and we can't quite get it to them fast enough.
Play gyms or activity gyms as they are sometimes called tend to be a firm favorite with babies from newborn up to about 12 months. These play gyms and activity nests mostly come in the form of comfortable, quilted or softly padded playmats, sometimes raised at the edges with a space in the middle for baby (like a ring doughnut).
And these play gyms can be either brightly colored or in soft, pastel shades.
But don't be fooled by thinking they are just snug and comfy resting places for babies to fall asleep in!
These activity gyms can provide a plethora of visual, audio and tactile stimulation for fast developing young inquisitive minds.
Often decorated with well known and lovable characters, Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Eyore, or farm and zoo animals as well, they can consist of detachable, hanging parts for
small babies to try to grasp. They tend to have parts that are crinkly, soft, scrunchy textures for baby to touch, squeeze and stroke. Some come with bright twinkling lights and bells and others make funny sounds, or musical sounds, and some even do both.
You will often find mirrors attached to these activity gyms, so that your baby gets to find and see its own reflection, often providing hours of fun for babies and carers alike. All of this is extremely important for developing young minds.
Babies are like a sponge, they are ready to absorb whatever information they can - and boy - they can't grasp it fast enough!
A lot of new research points to the first three years of life as being critical to a baby's developing brain. It is a known fact that during this period, not only does the brain triple in weight but it
also establishes thousands of billions of nerve connections. Astonishingly,
at the age of three, a young child has twice as many nerve connections as many adults. Therefore, in your role as a parent, or primary care giver, it is of paramount importance that you recognize this and understand just how much development is taking place inside your young baby's brain from
birth until the age of three.
At birth, children have most of the neurons (brain cells) they need for a lifetime however, these brain cells are not yet linked (or "wired") together to form the complex networks that are required for mature thought processes to take place. And what happens is that in the early years, young children's brain cells form these connections, or synapses as they are commonly called, very very
rapidly.
One of the crucial ingredients to aiding these connections to form, is experience, and repetition.
In a word, the more times you repeat something new, like showing a baby how to scrunch up a ball, the quicker these connections are formed. Therefore, it naturally follows that the more positive interaction you give an infant or toddler, the more you are helping to stimulate young brains.
This stimulation causes new connections to form neural pathways and strengthens existing ones.
Playing with activity gyms, with all
the bells and whistles that they offer or reading to a child, anything which allows a child to have positive, interactive processes, will aid your child's brain development.
So, as you lovingly sit and watch your young baby laughing and gurgling on the play mat or under the activity gym - do not underestimate the power of the changes taking place
in the brain, all enriching an inquisitive mind and arming it with a plethora of knowledge and
understanding for years to come.
About the Author
I Bansal is a mother of two and webmaster of 1st Toys Online:
http://www.1st-toys-online.com
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