Top 10 Activities to do with your New Baby

If you have recently had a new Baby, congratulations! It’s such an exciting but slightly scary time as you get used to each other. You probably want to give your Baby a head start in life and encourage their curiosity and learning so here are our top 10 tips for activities to do with your new Baby!

• Baby Massage – brilliant for bonding and different strokes have different benefits for the various systems in the body. Great for Colic and Digestive discomfort.

• Baby Yoga – a really gentle but effective ‘work out’ for your baby. Different moves will help to strengthen and build muscles or can aid with digestion etc.

• Tummy Time – essential for helping to build up your Baby’s neck, shoulder and back muscles, but not always easy to do as it’s not always very enjoyable for them! Ideas to get your started include popping them on their tummy on your chest and talk or sing to them to encourage them to lift their heads or place them on a beach ball! This adds height and moving the ball around makes it a lot of fun for them!

• Baby Sign Language – a brilliant way to aid communication between you long before your Baby can speak to you! You can learn various, simple signs to teach your Baby. They will first gain an understanding of what you are signing to them and later start signing back to you, as early as 5 months! It's very important to say the associated word at the same time as making the sign and follow through with the action.

• Sensory Play – collect together different items that are shiny, interesting to touch, wooden, colourful etc . Pass them to your Baby and allow them to explore them (most likely in their mouths to start with!). This encourages them to be curious and provides a great learning experience for them. Ensure items don’t have any loose bits they could choke on.

• Singing and Rhymes – great for calming an upset Baby and for introducing speech and aiding early language development.

• Reading to them – can be very comforting and they will enjoy listening to your voice. This helps with language development too!

• Playing with fabric – a scarf or interesting piece of fabric can provide a great learning experience! Move the fabric over their body naming their body parts as you go. Provides a ’touch’ sensory experience plus aids early body awareness, helping young babies realise the hand waving in front of them actually belongs to them!

• Get outdoors for a walk – the fresh air will be great for cheering you up if you’ve had little sleep or a bad day plus there are loads of exciting things for your Baby to look at and for you to tell them about!

• Try different Baby Groups – Going to an organised class or meet up is a great way to make new Mummy friends and for your little one to spend some time with other babies.

Need some more ideas, or want to enjoy the activities here and more? Get along to your local Tots Play class and enjoy special time with your new little one.

For our littlest babies we have our Baby Development Course which is a perfect first class and offers a whole range of activities to support your little one’s development and strengthen the bond between you. We also have our new Baby Tranquil courses, that offer a calm, safe space to help ease the stresses of these early days with your baby, supporting both your baby’s development as well as focusing on your own wellbeing (because you are important too!). You can find your nearest class by going to www.totsplay.co.uk/find-a-class and pop your postcode into the search bar.

No classes near you yet? Find out about running your own Tots Play classes with our Franchise programme.

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