Infant Activities for Childcare Providers

Infant play activities are essential to your child's growth. According to the Baby Center website, playing while learning, especially during the first year of your baby's life, will influence his social, emotional, physical, and cognitive growth. When placing your baby in childcare, you want to make sure that activities will be done to stimulate his senses.

  1. Playing Instruments, Singing and Dancing

    • Most infants enjoy nursery rhymes and music they can bounce to. Music will stimulate infants to make cooing sounds or to babble expressively, to show you whether they are happy or sad. Homemade instruments are an affordable way to keep babies busy. Take some empty, plastic containers and put some cereal in them. Put the lids on the containers and you have instant musical instruments that can also double as baby rattles.

    Hide and Seek

    • Infants love to explore by shaking, banging, touching and mouthing objects. You can stimulate their curiosity by hiding objects and allowing them to find them. Place a foam block underneath a blanket and point it out to the baby. Let him figure out a way to get to the foam block. Peek-a-boo is another way to keep babies active. Hide your face behind a blanket and let the infant pull the blanket away. This game will help babies realize that even if they cannot see the item, it still exists.

    Reading

    • Reading is one of the most important activities that you can do with a infant in your care. Not only does it help bond the baby with the caregiver, it also develops his language skills. Childcare providers should read books that have plenty of colorful pictures for the baby to explore. They should also use different, fun, animated voices when reading, because it will help keep the baby interested. Board books are ideal because they are durable and won't rip when the infant gets a hold of them.

    Toys

    • Infants can stay active by playing with toys. Infant toys come in many different shapes, sizes and colors. The type of toys infants play with depends on their stage of development. Young babies will prefer a bell or rattle that makes noise. They also like to explore with their mouths and hands, so any toys given to them should be safe and large enough to prevent choking. Older infants prefer toys such as blocks to stack or toys that can be placed inside on another. Toys that make sounds when a button is pressed will also keep them busy.

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