Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Grow that baby's mind!

MSN has a nice article titled "20 Ways to Boost Your Baby's Brain Power"
The list:
  1. Give your baby a physically healthy start before he is born.
  2. Have meaningful conversations.
  3. Play games that involve the hands (patty-cake, peekaboo, this little piggy).
  4. Be attentive.
  5. Foster an early passion for books.
  6. Use diaper time to build your baby's emotional feelings of having a "lovable body."
  7. Choose developmentally appropriate toys that allow babies to explore and interact.
  8. Respond promptly when your baby cries.
  9. Build trust by being attentive and focused.
  10. Use body massage to decrease your infant's stress and enhance her feelings of well-being and emotional security.
  11. Enlist help from your toddler at clean-up times -- a good way to practice categorization.
  12. Set up a safe environment for your crawling baby or toddler.
  13. Sing songs such as "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Ring-Around-the-Rosy."
  14. Match your tempo to your child's temperament.
  15. Make meals and rest times positive.
  16. Provide clear responses to your baby's actions.
  17. Use positive discipline.
  18. Model empathic feelings for others.
  19. Arrange supervised play with messy materials, such as water, sand, and even mud.
  20. Express joy and interest in your baby.

For more details read Alice Sterling Honig's full article