Your toddler may be too young to understand complex arithmetic, but he sure can understand these 5 basic activities.
The best way to nurture your newborn and toddler’s growing brain is through play, games and attention. Surprised?
1. Have Conversations
“There is a correlation between the number of words a child hears as a baby and his verbal IQ,” says Lise Eliot, Ph.D., author of What’s Going On in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life. The more you talk to him, the richer a vocabulary he’ll develop. Remember to keep it simple! Talk about his truck or blanket. If he tries to communicate by pointing, elaborate on it and ask questions that require feedback from him. For instance, if he points at his bottle, say “oh you want your bottle”?
2. Read Together
Reading together is so much fun but it also helps boost your baby’s IQ. “She’ll begin to grasp the basics of literacy from your reading sessions — that there are letters and words on the pages and that you read from left to right,” says Linda Acredolo, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. Read books that have noticeable pictures like trucks, ships, and animals. Read again when you get to the end of a book, it will sharpen your baby’s memory.
3. Give Her Time Alone
“There is a philosophy that kids need entertainment around the clock, but they need some downtime to amuse themselves, play with toys, or crawl,” Dr. Eliot says. Respect your baby’s need for time alone. It helps develop their attention span and brainpower.
4. Cuddle!
Once your baby has a sense of safety knowing you will always be there, he will be willing to explore on his own. “One thing that motivates children to learn to talk is wanting to connect with other people,” Dr. Acredolo says. Spend quality time playing, cuddling and caring for your baby. He’ll want to reciprocate.
5. Toys
Play is learning. Play nurtures development and fulfills a baby’s inborn need to learn. Play takes many forms, from shaking a rattle to peek-a-boo to hide-and-seek to pushing his trucks and feeding her teddy bear. Play can be done by a child alone, with another child, in a group or with an adult. Educational toys help children learn sounds, colours, shapes and more.
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