Innovative activities for infants aged five to six months
Around the age of five to six months, infants are making significant strides in understanding and interacting with their world. Engaging in sensory activities, they feel, mouth, and inspect everything within their grasp. Here are five enjoyable activities to promote your baby’s development:
- Sensory bottles: A clear plastic bottle filled with water, oil, and food coloring can captivate your baby for hours. Observing the changing colors and movements in the bottle can stimulate their curiosity. For added safety, you could secure the bottle cap with glue.
Other intriguing contents for sensory bottles:
- Various types and colors of beads, buttons, or pompoms
- Uncooked pasta
- Mini plastic eggs mixed with water and glitter
- Water and water beads
- Uncooked rice and beans
- Ribbon-decorated basket: For a straightforward yet engaging activity, consider attaching a selection of ribbons to a laundry basket. The ribbons’ different colors, lengths, and textures will provide your baby with an array of sensory experiences.
- Water play with a toy: A shallow tray filled with water and a floating toy is a fun option. As the baby follows the toy’s movement, plans how to reach it, and anticipates when to grasp it, their cognitive and physical abilities are stimulated. Including water in the activity can enhance the stimulation of multiple senses and improve focus.
- Balloon leg exercise: At this age, infants start realizing that they can create noise or movement with their legs and feet. Attaching a couple of helium-filled balloons to your baby’s ankles and encouraging them to kick promotes this realization and develops their gross motor skills. The act of looking down at their feet helps your baby strengthen the necessary muscles for rolling over.
- Mess-free sensory bags: Zip-lock bags can be repurposed for a range of sensory activities without the mess. For instance, a bag filled with ice and a little water, secured to a table or the floor using painter’s tape, can provide a unique sensory experience.
Additional sensory bag ideas:
- Hair gel combined with pompoms
- Water, oil, and food dye
- Flour, water, and food dye
- Pumpkin seeds
- Water and water beads
- Paint
