How to Play With a 6-Month-Old Baby

Video Transcript

"You have a 6 month old little boy or little girl, and you're wanting to come up with some ideas on how to play with him. I'm Dr. Donna with some advice on how to play. First of all, puppets, love puppets, babies love puppets, and you can get all kinds of puppets, they don't necessarily have to be people puppets, but if you do, they love interacting with puppets that make sound, or they talk to them, you can have a silly conversation with your child, the puppet can also imitate what the child is saying. Get some toys that they can begin to pour out and stack. Babies love to take things and take them out of containers and put them back in, and take them out and put them back in, so get them all kinds of opportunities to do that with shapes and balls. Picture books, great opportunity to continue reading to your child. If you haven't started reading, you want to do it now. Get books that have vibrant colors and pictures to them, they will love them. You can start working on some cognitive skills by talking about different animals and maybe the sounds they make, and the colors and the shapes, these are real life pictures, a really nice book. Also get books that have surprise in them, like a peek-a-boo book, your baby will love to play pee-a-boo, not only with the book, but also you can play peek-a-boo, taking a scarf and running it over their face back and forth, and peek-a-boo, they will love that. You can go to any store and get a tunnel, children love tunnels, this is a great way to start working on spacial awareness. You can play peek-a-boo on one end, sit your child on this, roll some balls through. You can also put your baby in their on their tummy, encourage them to start crawling through if they're not doing that. You want to break out all the pots and pans that you have in your house, and start creating a musical band, children love to sing and interact, so invite some friends over and have a play date, but work on instruments of all types, letting them play them, letting them hear them, letting them experiment with them. And bubble, love bubbles. Give your baby an opportunity, maybe when they're taking a bath, or when you're just interacting with them, sit on them, they'll start to reach and grab for them, and wonderful eye tracking to. I'm Dr. Donna with some advice on how to promote your 6 month old development through play."