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Choosing developmental toys for your baby can bring us either joy or frustration. It is important to choose toys that are age appropriate. As your baby gorws they go through different stages of development and toys that are age appropriate are geared towards developing those skills during that time.
There are 7 elements of development
The five senses. Through the five senses, babies receive information from their surroundings, so that they are able to explore and process it. Our babies senses open the world to them and help to expand the scope of their understanding. When our babies see, they learn to distinguish between size, shape, colors and movement. They hear sounds, with their volume, pitch and tone. They taste and smell, and grasp and feel texture, temperature, weight.
Gross motor development involves the group of large muscles that control the head, shoulders, arms, back, abdomen and feet.
Fine motor development involves development of control over the group of small muscles – in the palms of our hands and fingers, and surrounding our mouths and eyes — that enable us to carry out specific, very controlled movements such as grasping and manipulating objects, coordinating our eye and hand movements ( hand-eye coordination), speaking and moving our eyes.
Language and Communication. Receptive verbal skills precede the ability to speak, and this is a far better indication of your baby’s developing language skills than her verbal repertoire in the first months of life.
Cognition. Babies are born with a variety of cognitive skills that help them acclimate to their new reality outside the womb. They are constantly learning, and each and every day their cognitive skills grow and develop.
Object Permanence- During the first few months of a newborn’s life, the entire world as she knows it is what is before her eyes. As soon as something disappears out of her eyesight – it’s as if it never existed. Gradually the world opens up to encompass what is outside the range of her senses, and she begins to think and imagine people and objects that she doesn’t see in front of her. This is object permanence – the ability to understand that objects still exist after they are no longer in sight. Object permanence is an important element in a baby’s intellectual and emotional development. As soon as a baby is able to conjure up an image of a person or object in her mind, she is also capable of cognitive thought: remembering, imagining
Emotional intelligence, or EQ, encompasses all the social and emotional skills that make up our character.
It is important to when choosing developmental toys to look at the recommended age since babies develop certain skill sets at certain times during their first year. If the toy is too young, your baby will become bored. If the the toy is too sophisticated, your baby will become frustrated.
It is also important that when choosing developmental toys for your baby that they are safe, earth-friendly, earth friendly developmental toys that meet or exceed American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the European EN-71 (CE) standard, which means that there are no sharp edges, no small parts, flammability is tested, NO LEAD or lead paint, NO heavy metals or toxic elements.
