9 Games to Stimulate Your Baby's Senses

Babies develop their senses as they interact with the world. Your baby’s senses of hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell are all things they learn to use because of feedback they receive from their surrounding environment.

Here are some games you can use to stimulate your baby’s senses:

Dance With Your Child

Dance strengthens the bond between you and your child. Through dancing, your little one has the opportunity to listen to new sounds, different from those they’re already accustomed to, such as the human voice, singing, background noises, animal sounds…

By dancing, your child learns to move within the space around them. Dancing also helps them improve their balance and gain a better sense of their body.

If you two stand in front of a mirror, they will also be able to see all of their movements.

Give Them Massages

Massages help your baby to relax and sleep better. If they are crying, a massage can help to calm them down.

Massages also help them learn to be more responsive and pay more attention to everything that is happening around them: this will enhance their learning capacity.

Massages can relieve colic, which is so common during this stage, and stimulate the baby’s muscles, joints and whole body which helps with earlier psycho-motor development.

When it comes to stimulating your baby’s senses, these activities awaken their sight, smell and touch. As you rub their muscles, the baby has a chance to look at you, smell you up close, and feel pleasant sensations on their skin.

All of this promotes their emotional wellbeing and reinforces the ties between you.

Massages also help them develop their central nervous system and become more aware of their body.

Offer Them Children’s Books To Play With

Your child can learn from books, even from an early age. Placing your baby on their belly to entertain themselves by looking at children’s books is an effective exercise that benefits the development of their psycho-motor skills

Children’s books help to stimulate babies’ senses of touch and sight. Give them large books with brightly colored pictures and let them touch the pages while watching closely and interacting with the pictures in them.

You can also look for ones that have animal figures and imitate the sounds they make. That way you’ll also be stimulating their sense of hearing and helping with their cognitive development.

Have Them Play With Different Objects

A single doll offers your child an opportunity for entertainment. But more quickly than you think and contrary to what you want to see, the child will toss the doll that you so lovingly picked out and that you though would entertain them for hours.

To stimulate your baby’s senses, it is better to get them a variety of playthings which will awaken their curiosity as well as their creativity, while helping them to develop and master new skills.

With this in mind, we suggest you give them a (small or medium sized) cardboard box, and put these objects inside:

• Colored stickers (of geometric shapes, houses, animals, trees, cars…)
• Spice Packets
• Plastic Containers
• Colored Bracelets
• Pom Poms
• Soft Bread

Each of these elements will awaken them to their different senses. They will be able to experiment and learn.

5 Games to Stimulate Your Baby’s Senses

Here are some more games that can help you stimulate your baby’s senses:

• Banging pots and pans to stimulate hearing. If your baby can sit up, set them in front of a bunch of pots and pans. Give them one metal spoon and one wooden spoon and let them have fun making music.
• Using a mobile of family photos to stimulate their eyesight. Above their crib, where you would hang a mobile, hang some portraits of some of your closest relatives as well: of Mom, Dad, Grandma, their sibling… even themselves. The mobile should hang close enough for them to be able to see the photos. If you open a window and let a little bit of air flow through the room, the movement of the photographs will entertain them.
• A sock filled with aromatic plants for their sense of smell. Pick some sweet smelling plants and flowers from your yard, put them inside a sock, tie a knot in the top and give it to your baby to smell.
• Sandpaper to stimulate their sense of touch. Cut small squares, triangles and circles out of sandpaper. Let your child feel their rough texture as they grab the shapes and play with them.
• A sock filled with cereal to stimulate their sense of taste. Just like you did with the plants, pour some cereal into a clean sock and allow your baby to bite it. They will not be able to eat the cereal directly, but it will be softened with saliva, and the flavor of the cereal will escape.