Age: General Baby/Infant

DIY Montessori Inspired Object Permanence Box for baby & infants

Date: January 3, 2015

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: 6-9 months, Age: 9-12 months, Age: General Baby/Infant, Behavioural & Cognitive-Behavioural Psychology, Development, Montessori, Motor Skills, Play & Activity

Comments: 3 Replies

Do-it-yourself Object Permanence Box for infants: Inspired by Montessori materials.

This is practically free to make. You just need some cardboard, glue or tape, and a ball

DIY Montessori inspired object permanence box for baby/infants. Costs practically nothing to make, so many learning benefits. baby-brain.co.uk

How we made the box

Inspired by Montessori materials and activities, I’d always wanted an object permanence box but didn’t really want to spend £40 or so on the wooden box. So – I decided to try and make one out of cardboard and old boxes and it seemed to work. My Little Lovely (LL) really enjoys using it, putting the ball and other items in the top, exploring the box and seeing what happens if he puts the ball in the other hole.

Aims of the object permanence box: The infant has to drop a ball into the hole in the top of the box. The ball is then not visible for a moment but rolls out of the box onto the tray. The child therefore experiences a lesson in “object permanence” because they see that the ball didn’t just disappear out of existence – even though they couldn’t see it for a second, it still exists

Other learning benefits of the box: encourages curiosity, cause and effect, hand movements and fine motor skills (dropping the ball into the hole, etc), achieving a goal independently with repeated practice.

When to use the box: From when babies are old enough to sit up without support.

Here’s a short video of what the real deal looks like, as used by a 9 month old, and another of a child at nearly 1 year

Psychology & Object Permanence: Object Permanence is an awareness that children develop where “out of sight” does not mean “out of mind”. Initially, when something is removed from view of the baby then from their understanding it ceases to exist – they can’t see it, so it doesn’t exist. Understanding that something exists even when you can’t see it is an important developmental stage, according to the Stages of Cognitive Development as posed by Jean Piaget, an eminent and Swiss psychologist. It is posed as a stage in development because it requires the child to form a “schema”, or mental representation of the object. Infants develop this skill by the end of the “sensorimotor stage”. It was thought to develop around 8-12 months, although there is research to suggest it can develop earlier, and the psychological research does not seem to agree on exact age.

How to make the box:

1: I found a long cardboard box and cut some of the sides down so that I had a long, not too deep tray for the ball to run into and be contained.

2: An old tea box looked good for the little box to house the ball. I cut a hole in the top and on the front for the ball to run out of.

3: The ball needed a bit of help rolling out of the tea box and onto the cardboard tray so I made a little ramp (otherwise the ball just sat in the box after being dropped in and didn’t roll out). This was actually part of the lid from the tea box and was already slanted so I didn’t need to do much to it.

I then slotted the ramp into the tea box and glued the tea box onto the long box. You might be able to see in picture 2, there are some little flaps on the bottom of the box on each side. This was quite helpful and I put the glue on these flaps then pressed it down onto the long cardboard tray.

4: I realised that the box was looking a bit DIY so for some reason I decided to make it look more hideous by adding some wrapping paper.

5: et voilà – here is the finished box (not particularly Montessori style with the wrapping paper)

If you would like to make your box look more hideous with wrapping paper like I did, I would not recommend anything too busy like the one I used. Maybe just some plain, nice calming colours?
If I made it again I would also probably find a slightly bigger box for the ball to drop into. The tea box was ok but the ball rolled out of it pretty quickly, so maybe something a bit bigger might have held the ball out of sight for slightly longer. The tray is also slightly long, but I was using materials just hanging around the house that were waiting to go for recycling so I had to make do with what was available.

How to use the box with baby:

I quote from a Montessori site:

Presentation of the Montessori Object Permanence Box

1. Put the work mat in place and put the object permanence box on the work mat so it will be in front of the child. Encourage the child to help.

2. Sit facing the child with the work mat between you.

3. Name the box and the ball: “This is the box. This is the ball.”

4. Slowly and deliberately place the ball in the hole.

5. When the ball rolls to a stop in the tray, smile and pick it up.

6. Repeat the action.

7. Invite the child to place the ball in the hole.

8. Once the child begins putting the ball in the hole, quietly move aside and allow her to work undisturbed.

9. When finished, invite the child to put the materials away on a low shelf so she may work with them again when she wishes.

And here we are experiencing the box:

(age 12 months)

Baby using the object permanence box

Apologies to Montessori enthusiasts – I know that you value natural materials like wood, but i’m not a carpenter and couldn’t make a box out of wood. I also know that adding wrapping paper doesn’t make it look too natural. But, hopefully I’ve captured the essence of the box, the principles and learning benefits for the child, and made an accessible and cheap alternative that can be put together easily at home.

Music and child development

Date: December 27, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: General Baby/Infant, Development, Motor Skills, Play & Activity, Psychological Research

Comments: 5 Replies

How does music benefit children? What is the psychological research?

What are the benefits of babies and children playing music?

Social Development: music classes and playing music with babies and young children is going to involve a parent and probably other children too. The social elements of this (for parents too) are important. Also, turn taking, expression through a medium other than speech, and just having fun are going to be important elements. See the research below for findings that support the importance of interactive music making with baby.
Physical Development: playing an instrument requires good motor skills, both gross and fine. Baby bashing on a drum or shaking a rattle is an example of gross skills and more fine skills might come with pressing a key on a keyboard, or accurately hitting a note on a xylophone. Playing an instrument might also improve control and coordination skills in older children (see research below).
Psychological Development and Awareness:

– Cause and effect is a good one. Baby can learn that if they do one action (e.g. shake their hand up and down while holding a rattle) they have some effect (a noise) on their environment.

– Creativity

– Awareness of self and expression – I can make this noise, and express myself through it (especially as infants can not yet verbally communicate through speech).

– Encourages self-discipline, listening and concentration skills (see more about this from the research discussed below)

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INTERACTIVE music making is important:

Research as summarized here with very young children has found that:

One-year-old babies who participate in interactive music classes with their parents smile more, communicate better and show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music.

The infant brain might be particularly plastic with regard to musical exposure

The children in this study attended weekly music classes over 6 months. One class involved interactive music making and learning lullabies, songs with actions and nursery rhymes. Parents and babies worked together to learn to play percussion instruments, take turns and sing specific songs.

Another class involved parents and babies playing at various toy stations with recordings in the background.

Babies from the interactive classes showed better early communication skills, like pointing at objects that are out of reach, or waving goodbye. Socially, these babies also smiled more, were easier to soothe, and showed less distress when things were unfamiliar or didn’t go their way.

Babies who participated in the interactive music classes with their parents… preferred to listen to a version of a piano piece that stayed in key, versus a version that included out-of-key notes. Even their brains responded to music differently… [they] showed larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones.”

While both class types included listening to music and all the infants heard a similar amount of music at home, a big difference between the classes was the interactive exposure to music.

Therefore, the interactive nature of the music classes appeared to be important, rather than passively listening to music in the background or playing with minimal interaction between parent and child.

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Does playing music “IMPROVE YOUR KID’S BRAIN”?

I came across this interesting article (original journal article here): Could Playing Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and Other Music Improve Kids’ Brains? – Good question? What did the research find? The main summary of the findings was:

Musical training might…help kids focus their attention, control their emotions and diminish their anxiety.

They looked at children aged 6 to 18 years old, and associations between playing a musical instrument and brain development. They used a measure of “cortical thickness”, and write that as children age, the cortex (outer layer of the brain) changes in thickness. The researchers wanted to see what impact music training would have in the cortex. Interestingly, they found that:

Music playing altered the motor areas of the brain, because the activity requires control and coordination of movement.

Music practice influenced thickness in the part of the cortex that relates to “executive functioning, including working memory, attentional control, as well as organization and planning for the future”

What are the possible social applications of this?

Apparently, 3/4 of high school students in the US never or rarely take lessons in arts or music. Therefore, the authors suggest that it is important to find new and innovative ways to make music training more widely available to young people, and to start this during childhood.

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Playing music therefore appears to have an impact on skills and abilities such as attention, working memory, attention. What about just listening to music?

My Little Lovely (LL) and I attended a class called tiny Mozart when he was about 6 months old. It was ok. It involved listening to stories played out with musical accompaniment (It wasn’t particularly interactive between the parent and baby, though). So did it do his development any good?

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What are the benefits of babies and children Listening to music?

The Mozart Effect – listening to classical music enhances intelligence? The “Mozart Effect” is probably a well known term by now. This became a popular saying in the mid-90s after a study (Rauscher & Shaw) reported that students who listened to 10 minutes of Mozart showed improvements on spatial tasks. The effect was brief, only lasting 10-15 minutes. There has been a lot of research around this and results on the impact on “intelligence” and IQ vary. Later studies found only a minimal increase in IQ (1.5 points, this is really not very much) and limited improvements on tasks.
Listening to classical music for primary school children, though, has been shown to have some benefits. A project that introduced primary school children to classical music reported that “children listened to a range of music from a selection of well-known classical composers including Beethoven…Mozart…and Mendelssohn. The process of listening to live classical repertoire enabled children to enhance their listening skills and develop other skills needed for careful listening, including concentration and self-discipline.”
As this article here sums up, there is minimal evidence that listening to classical music increases IQ, so instead enjoy the research like the project above that shows children enjoy classical music and it can encourage listening and concentration skills

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How to use music with baby and toddlers

Interactive music making seems important. Learn to play an instrument together. I’m not talking about both taking up the guitar, I mean even something simple like shaking a maraca together. Take it in turns to make sounds. Respond to baby and mirror or echo their response. You could sing together too.
Singing is important for vocabulary development: “Singing songs teaches children about how language is constructed. When you sing, words and phrases are slowed down and can be better understood by your baby. Singing regularly will help your baby to build up a vocabulary of sounds and words long before they can understand the meaning”, according to this article from the BBC.
More on singing to baby: this article outlines some of the findings. It cites that babies are particularly responsive when the music comes from the parent directly, and singing along with a parent can help develop awareness and skills in reciprocal communication. Music and rhyme in nursery rhymes can impact on ability in spatial reasoning, which the article writes can enhance mathematical and scientific abilities.
The article continues, in addition to singing nursery rhymes add songs with actions and encouraging dancing to the music to help build balance, coordination, body awareness and rhythm skills.

how to make a simple bottle shaker to play music with baby and encourage psychological development

Make a simple bottle shaker to make music

Get creative with music making equipment. Use pots and pans, or make a simple shaker from an old plastic bottle filled with pulses, dried pasta or something that makes a noise. We made one using red lentils and tapioca (pictured left).
Look for local and free activities to get involved in. Local libraries where we are do baby singing sessions. They are about 30-45 minutes of singing nursery rhymes together in a big circle, using actions and sometimes props like colourful pieces of material to wave around and puppets (e.g. animal puppets for Old McDonald Had a Farm).
Enjoy listening to and experiencing the music with your child, rather than worrying if it’s the “right kind” of music or that it should be prescriptive somehow, e.g. you must listen to 10 minutes of Mozart a day in order to increase IQ. This is because the research is mainly reporting the benefits of music to be around skills of concentration, listening and discipline (among others).

References:

James Hudziak, M.D. et al. Cortical Thickness Maturation and Duration of Music Training: Health-Promoting Activities Shape Brain Development. Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, December 2014

David Gerry, Andrea Unrau, Laurel J. Trainor. Active music classes in infancy enhance musical, communicative and social development. Developmental Science, 2012; 15 (3): 398

Laurel J. Trainor. Musical experience, plasticity, and maturation: issues in measuring developmental change using EEG and MEG. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2012; 1252 (1): 25

Rauscher FH, Shaw GL, Ky KN. (1993). Music and Spatial Task Performance. Nature, 365(6447):611.

Baby painting sensory activity, with one ingredient and step

Date: December 20, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: 6-9 months, Age: 9-12 months, Age: General Baby/Infant, Play & Activity, Sensory

Comments: 1 Reply

The other month we had some fun with a “painting” sensory activity. We were sitting there one afternoon and I realised that we had some old cardboard, large pieces of packing paper and some yoghurt in the fridge. So we made it into a fun game.

I’m calling it “paint” because we used the yoghurt like paint. It’s also safe and edible for baby (although, of course check ingredients and make your own decision as to whether the product is safe for your child). To replicate this you can use:

How we set up our yoghurt painting experience

Yoghurt as the “paint”. If you want to make colours I suppose you could add natural colouring by mixing in crushed up fruits (e.g. raspberries, blueberries), or food colouring if you don’t mind baby tasting it.
- A large piece of cardboard or something to protect the floor like a plastic sheet or old sheet. It also makes it easy to clean up because you can just wipe it off after
- Paper to “paint” on. We used old packaging paper

The Little Lovely really enjoyed this. It was something novel for him. He liked smearing the yoghurt and feeling the sensation of it. He tried a little taste as well but looked like it was a bit sour for him! (natural yoghurt). Afterwards he was quite messy, but fortunately the overall had taken some of the yoghurt. Here’s some more pictures of what we did:

Yoghurt is presented to LL. He gets stuck in and has a feel. I needed to put a bit of paint on the paper and swish it about a bit to start him off and model what to do. Then, he was able to start “painting” by himself.

What does the paint feel like? LL decided it was quite fun (middle picture), and continued to swish it about the paper. This became more of a sensory/fun/swishing game rather than a fine art project!

We ran out of yoghurt so I got another load in a plastic container this time. LL wanted to taste it. Looks like it was a bit sour. He got progressively messier!

Safety first: be mindful of any allergies (e.g. to fruits, colours, yoghurts, cow’s milk, etc, and be mindful of baby’s age and if they can have cow’s milk should they decide to taste the yoghurt).

The importance of physical activity for baby and infants

Date: December 17, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: General Baby/Infant, Development, Motor Skills, Play & Activity

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Let's get physical! Physical activity with babies and toddlers: the importance of it, and guidelines.

Let’s get physical, baby

I found this nice page from the NHS on physical activity guidelines for children under 5 (walking and non-walking)

Baby containers

Often, it is very easy for baby to spend time being still or strapped in somewhere like, the high-chair, then maybe into the buggy for an outing, then when you get home, maybe into the cot for nap, then into the high-chair again for lunch, into the walker, swing, or bouncer…etc…etc. See this post here from Starfish Therapies for more about this “container shuffle”, as they call it (baby shuffles from one container to the next)

Ok… So How much physical activity do children under 5 years old need to do to keep healthy?

The NHS writes that it is important for babies and infants to be physically active every day for healthy growth and development.

Babies

Babies should be encouraged to be active from birth. Before your baby begins to crawl, encourage them to be physically active by reaching and grasping, pulling and pushing, moving their head, body and limbs during daily routines, and during supervised floor play, including tummy time. Once babies can move around, encourage them to be as active as possible in a safe, supervised and nurturing play environment. For more ideas, see Keeping kids active.

Toddlers

Children who can walk on their own should be physically active every day for at least 180 minutes (3 hours). This should be spread throughout the day, indoors or outside. The 180 minutes can include light activity such as standing up, moving around, rolling and playing, as well as more energetic activity like skipping, hopping, running and jumping. Active play, such as using a climbing frame, riding a bike, playing in water, chasing games and ball games, is the best way for this age group to be physically active.

All children under 5 years old

Children under 5 should not be inactive for long periods, except when they’re asleep. Watching TV, travelling by car, bus or train or being strapped into a buggy for long periods are not good for a child’s health and development

Hah – don’t think my Little Lovely would qualify as being inactive for long periods, he is far too busy exploring and needing to pick up everything he sees to be doing that.

There are also two nicely set out downloads of Physical Activity Guidelines for under 5s who are not yet walking here, and under 5s capable of walking here.

Examples of physical activity for children who are not yet walking includes:

Tummy Time Baby

‘Tummy time’ – this includes any time spent on the stomach including rolling and playing on the floor
Reaching for and grasping objects, pulling, pushing and playing with other people
‘Parent and baby’ swim sessions

What are the benefits of movement?
• Develops motor skills
• Improves cognitive development
• Contributes to a healthy weight
• Enhances bone and muscular development
• Supports learning of social skills

What are the benefits of being active for at least 180 minutes each day?
• Improves cardiovascular health
• Contributes to a healthy weight
• Improves bone health
• Supports learning of social skills
• Develops movement and co-ordination

⇒ Sounds good, so let’s get physical, then!

Happy Birthday Baby! Now we are one

Date: December 13, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: 9-12 months, Age: General Baby/Infant, Development, Play & Activity

Comments: 1 Reply

Now We Are One

Now we are one. I can’t believe how quickly it’s all gone. This time last year he was only a few hours old. I had no idea how much things were going to change after that. We had a great day today. Friends and family came round for a little party. Nothing too big and fancy. Had a cake, some food, some fun. It was loosely Caterpillar themed, based on our experiences of reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and that being something the Little Lovely might recognise.

We are going to continue the celebration tomorrow with a “birthday twin” friend who was born on the same day as LL, and her parents.

Time has flown. Back at work. Need to enjoy my free time with LL. Soon I’ll be writing a post or something on facebook and saying “now we are 10”, or something. Too fast.

now we are one, happy birthday baby, baby-brain.co.uk

First birthday mix

Our caterpillar themed cake complete with 1 candle! He couldn’t blow it out but we still did the whole happy birthday song to him. He pointed at the cake while we sang.

Birthday caterpillar cake

I tried to make some grape caterpillars by threading green and red grapes onto a cake pop stick. I avoided anything too sharp and spiky; the cake pop stick seemed good and no small children managed to poke themselves with it. Not everyone could tell they were supposed to be caterpillars though! Mainly the mothers could tell. Oh well. I was going to put icing sugar eyes on and little antennae made of carrot, but ran out of preparation time this morning. Here they are eating some paper fruit, a la The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Grape caterpillars trying to get at some fruit

Look at that lovely spread!

Food spread

Decorations up. LL was quite interested in all the sparkly things hanging around the house.

First birthday decorations

Return to the baby lab – we’re infant scientists, again! (psychological research participant)

Date: December 6, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: 9-12 months, Age: General Baby/Infant, Development, Psychological Research

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The Little Lovely, (age 11m 2 weeks) acted as a baby research participant again.

infant psychological research participant @the baby lab. Taking part in the study with EEG hat

Taking part in another research study

I wrote a few months ago about how we took part in some psychological research (i’m an infant scientist) at the Birkbeck BabyLab and Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development. LL took part in a study that was looking at which parts of the brain were responsible for understanding others’ beliefs. He wore some fancy headgear which I assume was supposed to detect which areas of the brain become activated and “light up”, when looking at some video clips during the study.

Well, we got a call asking if we would like to take part in another project. LL seemed to like it the first time so we went back. This was a different study and the headgear was slightly different. Fortunately, Mr Bear was on hand to model the new “hat” and tell us all about it and whether LL would like to wear it himself (pics left, and below)

What is this EEG hat thing?

The information sheet from the baby lab says that our brain cells communicate with each other using faint electric signals. We can “eavesdrop” on the communication by placing an array of sensors on the head that can pick up the natural activity of the person’s brain (EEG, electroencephalogram). The netted “hat” used (as shown on Mr Bear below, and later pictures by LL) is specifically designed for babies and can help researchers achieve a detailed “map” of the working brain. It’s safe and only monitors brain activity, a bit like a thermometer, it only measures what’s going on – it can take your temperature but can’t change it at all.


: Mr Bear shows us how to wear the EEG hat

The study: We’re ready to learn!

: Another day, another fancy hat

The researcher put the EEG net on LL, while another one distracted him with some toys. He didn’t seem to mind it at all and was not in any distress or discomfort. We then went into a room with a television screen. LL sat in a high chair and watched video clips of two women pointing to an object and naming it. One woman always named a familiar object correctly, the other incorrectly. Then, LL saw videos of only one of the women naming novel objects.

What was the aim of the study? The aim was to help us understand more about how infants prepare themselves to learn new information, and will enable further research into how infants seek information and how expectancy of information affects learning.

The idea behind the study was, as adults we learn best when we are interested in what we are learning. When we know we are about to be taught something we prepare so that we can process and remember as much as possible. This “readiness to learn” can be reflected in brain states, the intensity of which can be used to predict how well the information will be learned. This study was looking at these brain states reflecting “readiness to learn”.

When LL watched the video, the lab was observing his eye movement using an eyetracker and brain activation using the EEG.

The eye movement findings will help to establish whether infants preferred the informing or mis-informing woman in the videos. With the EEG – if infants learn to expect reliable information from one of the women, and not the other, we should see increased activation when the informing adult is present compared to when the mis-informing adult is present.

: In the study room – what’s going on?

Again, we got to contribute to a study that will tell us more about infant brain development and behaviour, and it was a fun afternoon out for us. The place was very baby friendly, and set up for us, of course.

And after all his hard work, LL got to have a nice play with some toys, oh and another free T-shirt! Then, he was quite tired and so had a nice sleep on the way home.

: A well deserved play and nap after taking part in the research

baby and infant visual development

Date: November 30, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: General Baby/Infant, Development, Psychological Research

Comments: 1 Reply

…

A little piece about baby and infant visual development:

What can babies see in the first few months of life?

The visual system is not fully developed at birth (1), and sight develops gradually. Baby has difficulty distinguishing between similar colours such as orange and red and so prefer high contrast colours such as black and white.

This is why you might see toys, pictures, stories for young infants in black and white, or simple high contrast patterns and colours

In fact, some research shows that infants might prefer blue and purple colours (2). This article outlines that:

Babies do have color preferences, and these preferences seem to be mostly determined by hue. Blues and purples are babies’ favorites, while greens, yellows, and reds are liked less…

…Does this mean expectant parents should run off to buy purple and blue toys?… In the end, I doubt it would make that much difference in a baby’s life. The first few months of infancy are over quite quickly, and are spent mostly sleeping…but it’s still interesting to see how babies’ visual systems develop, and how at just 3 months of age they do appear perceive colors in a way that is analogous to adults.”

Here’s some high contrast images that can be printed out:

Download & print for free: High contrast images, newborn & baby, visual images, 0-6 months

Click on image to open

What do babies prefer to look at?

Newborns have shown a preference for looking at faces (3)
Some research suggests that ability to process faces is quite well developed, despite the very young age, and might not be much different to an adults’ ability (4)
Infants are probably born with some information about the structure of faces (5)

What about other stuff like depth perception? Are babies born with it?

No one wants their child to go crawling off the sofa, table, any other deep drop. There’s a “classic” psychological study called the “visual cliff” (6) (Gibson and Walk, 1960; read the article here) that looked at depth perception. The psychologists predicted that depth perception would be something we are born with, rather than something we learn as children. They therefore developed an experiment to test this prediction with babies aged 6-14 months.

The study set up a “visual cliff”, which used a board laid over a heavy glass sheet, raised from the floor, with some patterned fabric under it. The fabric was immediately beneath the glass but then it looks as though it “drops off” on one half of the glass because the fabric is then laid down on the floor below (rather than directly beneath the glass). The glass still covers the space though, so it creates the visual effect of a drop off, or “cliff”, but the glass is still sturdy and continues across the drop so that any crawling baby will not actually fall, but it can see that there is a drop below.

The parent then stands on the “cliff side” and calls for the baby to crawl over to them from the “shallow side”. Many of the children found it difficult to crawl over to the parent because of the perceived drop. Only 3 of 27 “crept off the brink” onto the drop, many crawled away from the parent as they called to the baby from the cliff side, and some cried because they couldn’t get to the parent without crossing an apparent drop (this is an old study when ethics committees were maybe slightly differently, ok, so maybe not so nice to read about the kids crying)

Often they would peer down through the glass on the deep side and then back away. Others would pat the glass with their hands, yet despite this tactual assurance of solidity would refuse to cross. (pg 64)

The study concludes that:

Most human infants can discriminate depth as soon as they can crawl.

and… The behavior of the children in this situation gave clear evidence of their dependence on vision. (pg 64)

Still, a good idea to buy those stair gates and other relevant protection though, yeah?!

References:

Brémond-Gignac D., Copin H., Lapillonne A., Milazzo S. (2011). Visual development in infants: physiological and pathological mechanisms. Curr. Opin. Ophthalmol. 22, S1–S8
ZEMACH, I., CHANG, S., & TELLER, D. (2007). Infant color vision: Prediction of infants’ spontaneous color preferences Vision Research, 47 (10), 1368-1381
Stein, T., Peelen, M. V., & Sterzer, P. (2011b). Adults’ awareness of faces follows newborns’ looking preferences. PLoS ONE, 6(12), e29361.
Farroni T, Johnson MH, Menon E, Zulian L, Faraguna D, et al. (2005) Newborns’ preference for face-relevant stimuli: Effects of contrast polarity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102: 17245–17250.
Morton, J., & Johnson, M. H. (1991). A Two-Process Theory of Infant Face Recognition. Psychological Review, 98 (2),164-181
Gibson, E.J.; Walk, R.D. (1960). “Visual Cliff”. Scientific American 202 (4): 64

Simple colour match activity idea for baby and toddler

Date: November 1, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: 9-12 months, Age: General Baby/Infant, Behavioural & Cognitive-Behavioural Psychology, Development, Motor Skills, Play & Activity

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Simple colour match activity idea for baby and toddler

A quick & easy colour match activity to try with baby and toddler, use existing items around the house. baby-brain.co.uk

Colour match activity idea: Easy and quick to set up

I Just set this up for the Little Lovely to play with tomorrow morning.

At 10.5 months he’s probably a bit young for colour matching (I think, but let’s see what he does tomorrow), but we will:

talk about the colours
and I’ll demonstrate (model) sorting them

I think these will be important aspects if the kid is a bit too young to sort the colours themselves → Learning through observation (vicarious learning), and also the social and fun aspects of doing it this way will be important.

Other things he might get from this activity: Motor skill development, sensory play (items have different textures and functions), exploration, learning about colours.

Materials:

I used things that I already had about the house for this. The items are:

Blue: wooden round shapes, dolphin bath toy, a large lid from fridge pack of baked beans, linky loop, and a small plastic baby food pot

Green: crab bath toy, rattle, linky loop, and gum massager stick for teething

Pink: ball, wooden triangle shape, measuring spoon, and a roller with Velcro texture.

They are sitting on two pieces of LL’s clothing (blue vest and green jumper), and one of his toys (child safe mirror turned face down).

….. Hope he enjoys it!

Psychological Research: Does having children make you any happier?

Date: October 30, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: General Baby/Infant, Psychological Research, Uncategorized

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Research on: does having children make us any happier?

See the full article from the London School of Economics, here

In summary:

The birth of a first and a second child briefly increases the level of their parents’ happiness, but a third does not, according to new research from LSE and Western University, Canada

“According to the research, published in the journal Demography, parents’ happiness increases in the year before and after the birth of a first child, it then quickly decreases and returns to their ‘pre-child’ level of happiness”

“Those who become parents between the ages of 23 -34 have increasing happiness before a first birth, however one to two years after the birth, happiness decreases to baseline or below.”

“The arrival of a third child is not associated with an increase in the parents’ happiness, but this is not to suggest they are any less loved than their older siblings. Instead, this may reflect that the experience of parenthood is less novel and exciting by the time the third child is born or that a larger family puts extra pressure on the parents’ resources. Also, the likelihood of a pregnancy being unplanned may increase with the number of children a woman already has – and this brings its own stresses.”

So – they’re not saying there’s any link between no increase in happiness and not loving or looking after the child! (phew). I like the idea of it being less novel though, kind of makes sense, or other social/economic factors that could affect the “third child” (or later children in general) such as pressure on resources.

Baby-Brain thinks: Of course, “happiness”, will depend on what you want it to mean and there are going to be many other “changes” that come with children – positive, not so positive (?!) or just differences to one’s life that come with such a significant thing as having a child!

Practising that pincer grasp and fine motor skill development – with raisins!

Date: October 18, 2014

Author: Emm

Categories: Age: 9-12 months, Age: General Baby/Infant, Development, Feeding, Motor Skills

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developing pincer grasp and fine motor skills by grasping raisins, for baby.

Fine motor skill and pincer grasp practice for baby – with raisins

So we were eating snacks today, and LL (aged just over 10 months) always wants to eat what you’re eating if you eat in front of him. I was eating jaffa cakes and so decided he probably shouldn’t have these because they are covered in chocolate and quite sugary.

I gave him some nice organic raisins instead (still have sugar in them, I suppose, but natural sugars?). I put them in a plastic tub for him to fish out and practice his fine motor skills. This was probably a good activity to help him practice his “pincer grasp” as well. Here’s some pictures. He seemed to like the raisins

Baby enjoying his raisins, pincer grasp and fine motor skill development

Psychology resource and perspective on babies and motherhood

Do-it-yourself Object Permanence Box for infants: Inspired by Montessori materials.

This is practically free to make. You just need some cardboard, glue or tape, and a ball

Other learning benefits of the box: encourages curiosity, cause and effect, hand movements and fine motor skills (dropping the ball into the hole, etc), achieving a goal independently with repeated practice.

When to use the box: From when babies are old enough to sit up without support.

Here’s a short video of what the real deal looks like, as used by a 9 month old, and another of a child at nearly 1 year

How to make the box:

1: I found a long cardboard box and cut some of the sides down so that I had a long, not too deep tray for the ball to run into and be contained.

2: An old tea box looked good for the little box to house the ball. I cut a hole in the top and on the front for the ball to run out of.

I then slotted the ramp into the tea box and glued the tea box onto the long box. You might be able to see in picture 2, there are some little flaps on the bottom of the box on each side. This was quite helpful and I put the glue on these flaps then pressed it down onto the long cardboard tray.

4: I realised that the box was looking a bit DIY so for some reason I decided to make it look more hideous by adding some wrapping paper.

5: et voilà – here is the finished box (not particularly Montessori style with the wrapping paper)

If you would like to make your box look more hideous with wrapping paper like I did, I would not recommend anything too busy like the one I used. Maybe just some plain, nice calming colours?

How to use the box with baby:

I quote from a Montessori site:

And here we are experiencing the box:

What are the benefits of babies and children playing music?

Psychological Development and Awareness:

– Cause and effect is a good one. Baby can learn that if they do one action (e.g. shake their hand up and down while holding a rattle) they have some effect (a noise) on their environment.

– Creativity

– Awareness of self and expression – I can make this noise, and express myself through it (especially as infants can not yet verbally communicate through speech).

– Encourages self-discipline, listening and concentration skills (see more about this from the research discussed below)

INTERACTIVE music making is important:

Research as summarized here with very young children has found that:

One-year-old babies who participate in interactive music classes with their parents smile more, communicate better and show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music.

The children in this study attended weekly music classes over 6 months. One class involved interactive music making and learning lullabies, songs with actions and nursery rhymes. Parents and babies worked together to learn to play percussion instruments, take turns and sing specific songs.

Another class involved parents and babies playing at various toy stations with recordings in the background.

** Therefore, the interactive nature of the music classes appeared to be important, rather than passively listening to music in the background or playing with minimal interaction between parent and child.**

Does playing music “IMPROVE YOUR KID’S BRAIN”?

I came across this interesting article (original journal article here): Could Playing Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and Other Music Improve Kids’ Brains? – Good question? What did the research find? The main summary of the findings was:

What are the possible social applications of this?

Apparently, 3/4 of high school students in the US never or rarely take lessons in arts or music. Therefore, the authors suggest that it is important to find new and innovative ways to make music training more widely available to young people, and to start this during childhood.

Playing music therefore appears to have an impact on skills and abilities such as attention, working memory, attention. What about just listening to music?

My Little Lovely (LL) and I attended a class called tiny Mozart when he was about 6 months old. It was ok. It involved listening to stories played out with musical accompaniment (It wasn’t particularly interactive between the parent and baby, though). So did it do his development any good?

What are the benefits of babies and children Listening to music?

As this article here sums up, there is minimal evidence that listening to classical music increases IQ, so instead enjoy the research like the project above that shows children enjoy classical music and it can encourage listening and concentration skills

How to use music with baby and toddlers

The article continues, in addition to singing nursery rhymes add songs with actions and encouraging dancing to the music to help build balance, coordination, body awareness and rhythm skills.

Get creative with music making equipment. Use pots and pans, or make a simple shaker from an old plastic bottle filled with pulses, dried pasta or something that makes a noise. We made one using red lentils and tapioca (pictured left).

References:

James Hudziak, M.D. et al. Cortical Thickness Maturation and Duration of Music Training: Health-Promoting Activities Shape Brain Development. Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, December 2014

Rauscher FH, Shaw GL, Ky KN. (1993). Music and Spatial Task Performance. Nature, 365(6447):611.

The other month we had some fun with a “painting” sensory activity. We were sitting there one afternoon and I realised that we had some old cardboard, large pieces of packing paper and some yoghurt in the fridge. So we made it into a fun game.

I’m calling it “paint” because we used the yoghurt like paint. It’s also safe and edible for baby (although, of course check ingredients and make your own decision as to whether the product is safe for your child). To replicate this you can use:

Yoghurt is presented to LL. He gets stuck in and has a feel. I needed to put a bit of paint on the paper and swish it about a bit to start him off and model what to do. Then, he was able to start “painting” by himself.

What does the paint feel like? LL decided it was quite fun (middle picture), and continued to swish it about the paper. This became more of a sensory/fun/swishing game rather than a fine art project!

We ran out of yoghurt so I got another load in a plastic container this time. LL wanted to taste it. Looks like it was a bit sour. He got progressively messier!

Safety first: be mindful of any allergies (e.g. to fruits, colours, yoghurts, cow’s milk, etc, and be mindful of baby’s age and if they can have cow’s milk should they decide to taste the yoghurt).

I found this nice page from the NHS on physical activity guidelines for children under 5 (walking and non-walking)

Baby containers

Ok… So How much physical activity do children under 5 years old need to do to keep healthy?

The NHS writes that it is important for babies and infants to be physically active every day for healthy growth and development.

Babies

Toddlers

All children under 5 years old

There are also two nicely set out downloads of Physical Activity Guidelines for under 5s who are not yet walking here, and under 5s capable of walking here.

Examples of physical activity for children who are not yet walking includes:

‘Tummy time’ – this includes any time spent on the stomach including rolling and playing on the floor

Reaching for and grasping objects, pulling, pushing and playing with other people

‘Parent and baby’ swim sessions

⇒ Sounds good, so let’s get physical, then!

We are going to continue the celebration tomorrow with a “birthday twin” friend who was born on the same day as LL, and her parents.

Time has flown. Back at work. Need to enjoy my free time with LL. Soon I’ll be writing a post or something on facebook and saying “now we are 10”, or something. Too fast.

Our caterpillar themed cake complete with 1 candle! He couldn’t blow it out but we still did the whole happy birthday song to him. He pointed at the cake while we sang.

Look at that lovely spread!

Decorations up. LL was quite interested in all the sparkly things hanging around the house.

The Little Lovely, (age 11m 2 weeks) acted as a baby research participant again.

What is this EEG hat thing?

The study: We’re ready to learn!

What was the aim of the study? The aim was to help us understand more about how infants prepare themselves to learn new information, and will enable further research into how infants seek information and how expectancy of information affects learning.

When LL watched the video, the lab was observing his eye movement using an eyetracker and brain activation using the EEG.

Again, we got to contribute to a study that will tell us more about infant brain development and behaviour, and it was a fun afternoon out for us. The place was very baby friendly, and set up for us, of course.

And after all his hard work, LL got to have a nice play with some toys, oh and another free T-shirt! Then, he was quite tired and so had a nice sleep on the way home.

…

A little piece about baby and infant visual development:

What can babies see in the first few months of life?

The visual system is not fully developed at birth (1), and sight develops gradually. Baby has difficulty distinguishing between similar colours such as orange and red and so prefer high contrast colours such as black and white.

This is why you might see toys, pictures, stories for young infants in black and white, or simple high contrast patterns and colours

In fact, some research shows that infants might prefer blue and purple colours (2). This article outlines that:

Here’s some high contrast images that can be printed out:

Therefore, the interactive nature of the music classes appeared to be important, rather than passively listening to music in the background or playing with minimal interaction between parent and child.