Whilst no two babies are exactly alike and your little one will develop at their own pace, during the first few months of their life, they will start growing and developing really quickly. Your little one will reach a number of developmental milestones before their first birthday and they will start to explore and learn about the world around them.

As a parent, there are lots of things you can do to support your baby’s development and help them reach their milestones in their early years. One developmental tool that is also really fun is sensory play and introducing baby sensory toys and props into playtime can be incredibly beneficial. Ultimately, sensory play is any activity that stimulates your little one’s senses and simply playing together can make a big difference to their development. Below we have looked into a few of the early years milestones that can be supported by sensory play.

Grasping toys

From a very young age, your little one will start learning how to coordinate the muscles in their fingers and hands, and they will start trying to grasp things around them, like your fingers or your hair. You can support the development of their fine motor skills by introducing intriguing sensory toys to play with. Baby sensory toys that make a noise are brilliant for encouraging your little one to hold and shake the toy, and toys with dangling objects can encourage them to reach out too. These toys can also help with things like visual tracking and hand-eye coordination.

Rolling over

In addition to developing fine motor skills, baby sensory toys can help with the development of gross motor skills as well and sensory play can help to make your little one strong enough to roll over. Using different sensory toys during tummy time, for example, can help to strengthen core muscles like the neck, back, arm and shoulder muscles. Not to mention, sensory play can help your baby gain a sense of their own body too and improving self-awareness can support a number of different milestones.

Saying first words

It doesn’t take many months for your baby to start making vowel sounds like ‘oh’ and ‘ah’, and developing their language skills is really important in the first couple of years. When you participate in sensory play with your little one, this social interaction is brilliant for their cognitive development. If you experiment with the concept of cause and effect together too, it is likely that your little one will respond to sounds sooner, and they will start turning towards intriguing and familiar sounds. Your baby will also then start responding to sounds and vocalising their feelings towards the different sounds they hear.

Crawling

Sensory play is known for being a great way to improve your little one’s attention span and it feeds their curiosity. When you play with monochrome toys from a young age, you can aid your little one’s eyesight development too, helping them see across the room. Over time, placing intriguing baby sensory toys out of reach will encourage your little one to do all they can to get to the toy, and using their curiosity can be an effective way to get them to crawl. Playing together with sensory toys to strengthen the muscles used for crawling is always useful too.

Standing

The more your little one’s gross motor skills develop and the more intrigued they are by the world around them, the sooner they will start pulling themselves up into a standing position. By continuing to use baby sensory toys and props with your little one, you can encourage them to start cruising around a room and even dancing to music when they’re strong enough to do so. Before you know it, they will be walking unaided and exploring everywhere they’re able to in an attempt to discover and learn more about the world around them.

Using sensory toys to help your baby reach their first milestones

All in all, engaging in sensory play can be really beneficial when you’re wanting to support your little one’s early years development and using baby sensory toys is a great way to help them reach their first milestones. If you’re completely new to sensory play and you don’t own any sensory toys, be sure to explore the My Little Goody Box website today.

We supply a vast selection of baby sensory toys that your little one can use throughout their early years and many sensory toys and props can be used from 0 months +. Our sensory boxes are perfect for anyone who is new to sensory play and in these boxes, you will find everything you need to create fun sensory experiences for your little one. Don’t worry, our sensory boxes also come with play guides and we can provide you with lots of inspiration for different activities to try to support your baby’s development.