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Best For Playing

Welcome back to our guide for all things Best for Baby!  Today we cover some of the ways to have fun with your baby, while also getting them started early with home learning!

 

Newborn – 18 months

It might seem like all your baby does is sleep, eat and cry, but playtime is an incredibly important part of their day, even as newborns. Through play, your baby develops skills for thinking, understanding, communicating, remembering and imagining. Mostly the only toy they need at the start is you – speaking and singing to them, playing peekaboo, tickling them with feathers, giving them objects of different sizes, shapes and colours to reach for and grasp – are some of the things they love the most. All this helps with your baby’s physical, social and emotional development. 

We have a treasure trove of plush toys to keep your baby stimulated, such as the Giggles Mobile Phone Shaped Toy, designed to make mobile phone sounds when pressed, or the Giggles Rattling Ball Toy, which rattles when shaken. The Giggles Plush Toy Mobile, which makes squeaky sounds when squeezed, can be attached to the overhead bar of the stroller or crib, keeping them engaged and happy so you can be freed up to attend to other things.

 

 

Regular tummy time and floor play are also very important, as it helps your baby develop muscle strength and control, and lets him or her see and experience the world from a different perspective. The Juniors Play Gym and Juniors Printed Playmat can keep your little one occupied for hours on end, with their bright colours and mobile soft toys providing visual and sensory stimulation. Again, you can’t overstate the importance of having your hands freed up to take care of something else on your to do list, confident that your little one is safe, comfortable and having fun.

 

 

As they start to crawl all over the place and try to stand up, and you start frantically baby proofing to remove all hard edges and other potential hazards, you may also want to lay soft tiles in the playroom or nursery to ensure a soft landing when they fall, especially if you have hard floors. The Juniors Textured 4-Piece Floor Mat Set is ideal for this, coming in bright colours and in interlocking pieces, so you can build it up to any size, depending on the floor space to be covered. They are made of high-quality foam, and are waterproof, so any spills can easily be wiped up leaving the floor as good as new.

 

18 months +

As they develop into toddlers, they begin to become more selfsufficient, and enjoy playing with things that help them to run, build, push, climb, balance, sort, count and any matter of physical, creative and learning activities.

With the Junior brand, we have developed a complete range of playsets to help with all aspects of your toddler development. The Sort n Learn Activity House provides the ideal combination of learning and fun, a vibrant and colourful playset that teaches your little one to sort shapes. Similarly the Rainbow Abacus, a colourful set of beads to help teach your kid to count in a fun and interesting way, and ideally sized for those tiny hands. Coordination skills are put to the test with the My First Wooden Pounding Bench, helping your child to learn different geometric shapes while hammering them into the corresponding hole. The 50-piece Bricks Playset provides another opportunity to develop fine motor skills and improve hand-eye coordination.

 

 

That’s all for playtime, see you next time as we ‘step’ in to the section on learning to walk!