How to Develop Your Child’s Brain -10 Months

How to Develop Your Child’s Brain -10 Months

8 May 2017 | 7 min Read

Kuhoo Gupta (The K Junction)

Author | 101 Articles

Is your baby 10 months old already? Well then the first birthday is close enough! Your baby is now moving around actively and is engaging with the world around. She/he is probably now learning to stand along the furniture, trying to balance while sitting, clapping hands, mouthing everything in their reach, babbling sounds, using those tiny hands to self feed.

To satisfy these curious little beings and their “absorbent minds” – in this edition of our early learning article series – let us discuss how you can enrich the environment and experiences of your 10 months old baby with some easy activities. You can surely continue doing some activities that I suggested in the previous articles in this series . These activities are mere pointers/guidelines. Of course, they can be done before and after 10 months. So feel free to tweak them as per your child’s interest and understanding.

 

Flashcards

Flashcards are an amazing tool to stimulate the senses of your child – sense of vision and hearing. I have talked about flashcards and Glen Doman in my previous articles in this very series. You can go back and refer to them. This time, I am going to talk about encyclopaedic knowledge flashcards. Usually they are 10 cards on 1 topic which is not a day to day object for the child – for example sea animals or construction vehicles or anything else. Typically, a Glen Doman encyclopaedic card contains a picture of the object on a white background with no distractions – which means if the card has a bulldozer’s picture on it, there will not be any road or building on it, just the bulldozer. And on the back of the card, the name of the object will be written along with a bunch of details of the object. For babies this young, you can flash the cards quickly one by one   and say the name of the object aloud. You can read more about early childhood brain development and flashcards here

 

Image source: educationaltoysplanet

 

Say and Do

Not an activity so much but this in fact should be followed from pregnancy onwards. It is all about respecting the identity of the child. Basically say and do is telling your child, everything you do with or along with your child, before you actually do it. Tell your child that you are going to give them a bath and then take them to the bathroom. Tell your child you are going to take them to the park and then take them to the park. And everything you can manage to tell. It builds trust between the child and the parent and the child feels important. It is good for a long term beautiful relationship with your child and the relationship of your child to himself.

 

Sensory Exposure

Babies need a lot of sensory exposure because they are multisensory learners according to Maria Montessori. Do not shy away from letting them crawl into the grass, go into the mud or sand or water. Of course we need to be wary of their mouthing habits but give a lot of natural exposure like grass, sea, air, mud, water, trees or anything! Talk about what they are touching. I used to take my son to the garden, do a knock knock game like this – I would knock the coconut tree and say – “Knock Knock, who is that? It is coconut tree”. And at 26 months now, he still does that when we go to the garden, and guess what he can recognize a coconut tree (and couple of others too) anywhere on this earth! Feed their hunger for language – a sensitive period of language acquisition according to Montessori

 

Image source: sensory

 

What Is That Object?

Introduce an element of wow/surprise to your baby. Keep a bag full of his favourite toys and let him slide his hands inside the bag. He will explore for a while and then take out one object. For example he takes out a toy dog – you would clap and excitedly say – oh wow its your favourite dog. By this activity, you are feeding language skills to your child, playing dramatics which is very useful to interact with the child and the child is also working on his motor skills to grab an object without seeing it. It is a difficult task to master at that age, however simple it may look to an adult! It also teaches a child about object permanence (I discussed this in previous articles in this series) that if his toy is out of sight, it does not cease to exist and he can himself grab the object without seeing it. It gives the child lot of confidence too.

 

DIY Ribbon Pulling Toy

This simple DIY cheap toy will work on pincer grip of your child which is developing right now and might keep him occupied for couple of minutes (which is a lot of attention span for a baby hehe). Just take a bottle/container and poke some holes into it. Now insert a long ribbon from one side and take it out from another hole. Tie knots on both the ends at a length so that the ribbon does not slide off the bottle. The ribbon can be pulled from both the sides of the bottle. Similarly insert couple of more ribbons. Now the game for the child is to grab the ribbon using his fingers (pincer grip), apply pressure and pull it till it stops because of the knot (motor skills), use another ribbon and repeat, move around the bottle (motor skills) and pull the other side of the ribbon. It is an engaging activity for babies.

 

 

Touch and Feel Activities

A scrap cardboard, glue and some pieces of yarn or pipe cleaner, and you are ready to give the diy sensory shapes board to your baby to explore. The image is self-explanatory.

 

Image source: source toddlerapproved

 

There are so many touch and feel books available for babies that you can use readymade. Read aloud book sessions are a great way to bond and there are enormous benefits of reading books to babies and toddlers. It is never too early to introduce books to children! By this time, my son was able to successfully flip the pages of a board book himself and marvel at the illustrations and touch and feel elements.

 

 

 

Sensory Obstacle Crawls

By this time, in most cases, your baby must be a pro in crawling. Throw some cushions on the floor and let your baby crawl through them or over them chasing a toy perhaps. A great simple to set up gross motor activity that they will certainly enjoy! You can also use different materials as obstacles to enhance the sensory feel, like a fluffy blanket or a cardboard or a bubble wrap on the floor between the cushions or elsewhere.

 

Image source: playingandlearningbeginsathome

 

That is it for now but do look out for more such easy-to-do, month-wise activities for children in this series. If you have a query or a contribution to make, do let us know in the comment section below.

 

To read more such articles on my blog, click here

 

As your baby grows up, keep reading this series on: How to Develop Your Child’s Brain: 9 Months, How To Develop Your Child’s Brain: 11 Months, How To Develop Your Child’s Brain: 12 Months 

Explore the entire collection of articles: Toddler Learning 

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