How to Choose Toys for Babies 3 Months & Over

Your baby's toys are more than entertainment to pass the time -- they are tools for learning. When choosing toys for babies 3 months old and over, the best toys require active participation to encourage your little one's physical, mental and emotional development. His toys should help him explore his senses with textures, sounds, movement, shapes and colors; and facilitate learning about his own capabilities, social interactions and spatial sense at the appropriate developmental level for his age. At the same time, safety is a prime concern of all parents, so protect your baby by making sure his toys meet safety standards.

Things You'll Need

  • Rattles
  • Musical mobiles
  • Infant play gyms
  • Texture exploration toys and storybooks
  • Touch-activated sound and light toys
  • Unbreakable mirror or mirrored storybook
  • Stacking cups
  • Stacking blocks
  • Roly-poly toys
  • Pots and pans
  • Wooden spoons
  • Shape and color sorter toys
  • Plastic bucket
  • Talking books
  • Toys with buttons, levers and dials
  • Play telephone
  • Baby storybooks
  • Animal sound toys
  • Foot power riding toys
  • Barnyard animal play sets

Instructions

    • 1

      Select toys that take advantage of your child's capabilities. At the age of 3 and 4 months, babies are starting to grasp objects, reach for things and take notice of sounds and speech. Therefore, brightly colored and patterned rattles, musical mobiles and infant play gyms provide your baby with visual and auditory stimulation while developing his motor skills.

    • 2

      Add texture exploration toys to your baby's toy chest at around 5 to 6 months of age as she gains more control over reaching and grasping. Provide toys that react to your baby's touch with sound, movement or colored lights. Show her her own reflection with a mirror book or an unbreakable, baby-safe mirror. Colorful stacking toys can help your wee one learn relative sizes, colors and motor control. Roly-poly toys that she can bat at help your baby explore cause and effect. This is also the age at which you can introduce her to making music with your pots and pans and wooden spoons, and let her experiment with what kinds of sounds she can make.

    • 3

      Bring shape and color sorters into the picture to introduce sorting and visual discrimination when he's about 7 to 8 months old. These toys are also a good way for your baby to develop his understanding of "in" and "out" as he repeatedly puts all the pieces in the container and then dumps them out again. Books and toys that have buttons, levers and dials that cause an auditory or visual reaction delight babies at this age.

    • 4

      Use a lot of descriptive vocabulary as you play with your child, naming colors, objects, sights, sounds and smells, sizes, directional words and counting terms. Babies 9 months old and up continue to develop greater complexity of skill with the types of toys you introduced earlier but are also actively picking up vocabulary connections so the more you can talk to your little one, the more foundational vocabulary you expose her to to help her make sense of her world. Reading together, play telephone calls and toys that make animal sounds all provide communication practice to strengthen her developing language skills.

    • 5

      Add foot power riding toys to your tot's repertoire at around 12 months of age for practice following directions and developing large motor skills. Make sure the riding toys have safety harnesses to prevent falls. Animal play sets can precipitate animal imitation games or matching each animal to where it lives.

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