Babies are wired to learn! Here’s how to support their learning journey.
Sounds
Babies are born with fully developed hearing and they’ve been listening since the womb. While they probably weren’t following your nightly conversations of, “I don’t know, what do you want for dinner?” They recognize your voice and will turn their head when they hear your voice (PS: They vote for pizza).
Support your little one’s development by talking and singing with them. You can also try speaking in parentese, a sing-song voice that helps your little one hear and start to understand the individual sounds in words.
Sights
Newborns are also drawn to high contrast images because their eyes are tuned to notice the edges of objects against a background (think black objects on a light blanket). Bold patterns with lots of edges provide plenty of visual input to engage your baby’s attention and help develop their eyesight.
Baby’s brain / developmentally targeting
Your baby wants to explore their (tiny) world. Here’s how to help them:
- Take your baby for a walk around the house, and bring them close enough to new and interesting objects so they can focus on it.
- Flowers, tea cups, a picture frame. Anything works, as long as it holds their attention!
- Name the object for them. “This is a flower, this is a picture of Aunt Becky.” You might feel a little silly, but it really does help babies with language acquisition.
- Try pointing out objects. Sooner or later, your baby will start following your finger and sharing in observations.
Panda Crate product insight
Parenting isn’t black and white. But newborn vision is!
- Newborns are drawn to high-contrast images, because their eyes are tuned to notice the edges of an object against a background (like a dark block on a light blanket). Bold patterns with lots of edges engage your baby’s attention and help develop their eyesight
- Place the cards about a foot away from your baby’s face to start. (As their vision develops, you can move it farther away).
- Remember your walk around the house? Same rule applies here—point to the cards and name what you see to help focus your baby’s attention and kickstart language acquisition.
- Try slowly moving the card back and forth to see if they’ll follow it with their eyes.
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