NanaKim

Parents and Grandparents of all generations know that babies spend a lot of their waking hours looking up at the ceiling while being changed or lying in a crib. The focal distance of the eyes is pretty close at first so that they can get a good look of the faces of the people holding them. It takes time to see further across a room although they can easily pick up on any movement. Initially, babies see black and white more easily and then later color vision develops as this very short video demonstrates perfectly.

Parents have been interested in giving their baby something to look at for a long time. In the last century, mobiles were designed especially for infants to look at while awake in the crib. I love the selection that my granddaughter has available to her at her home. The one that is used for diaper changing is a spiral from Lovevery, part of the first kit of a series of age appropriate collections of toys that I never had anything like and now I’m in love with. The link to Lovevery lands on the page for visual development in infants and contains a video explaining how to use these gorgeous items, and how they benefit development.

My daughter added other mobile options for the baby gym such as these primary colored 3-D shapes in shiny holographic paper.

Later there was also a row of wool wrapped balls in shades from light yellow to dark orange arranged in a row from short to long strings. Baby brains benefit from feeling a variety of textures. It’s all so interesting to growing minds. The crib mobile was a much quieter group of fuzzy cats circling a felted mouse.

At NanaKim’s house, I didn’t want to go shopping for the latest thing necessarily. I did have two decorative wind chimes from my garden though. One in glass, pictured below, which was so fun when I put it at the right height for generating a satisfying, gentle tinkling sound as arms and legs waved and kicked. You can see how I used camera tripods to mount the chimes. The crossbar was a Swiffer handle attached with elastic bands.

I also had a lovely series of shiny metal balls (shown in the photo at the top of this post), which lit up in multicolors when the daylight faded. They had a different pretty sound when patted and batted. Hopefully our granddaughter did not tire of any of these visual toys.

Although my granddaughter spent a lot of time sleeping, eating and being changed, there was plenty of time left for floor play with black and white high contrast visuals and these mobiles either thoughtfully made for infants or repurposed from the garden. All the sights, sounds, tastes and textures of a baby’s day causes new brain connections. It’s a great time to be making sure that data input is high quality and comes with an abundance of love.