During the first year of life, babies have huge leaps in their development. Sometimes they change and grow from day to day or even hour to hour. From birth, most babies like to play and most experience the world through their senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste.

Play activities for birth to one month

• Eye contact with baby
• Play with faces—looking at high contrast picture of faces or faces on toys
• Look in the mirror with baby
• Talking and singing to baby—vary tone and rhythm
• Dance slowing to quiet music like lullabies, holding baby close
• Read to baby—she won’t understand words, but enjoys the sound of your voice
• Move baby’s arms and legs gently to a rhythm

Play activities for one to four months

• Sing songs, read (doesn’t matter what), and dance
• Imitate sounds that baby makes
• Play simple peekaboo—cover your face with a washcloth and drop it, saying “Peekaboo!”
• Put small, safe toys in baby’s hand, encouraging him to grasp it
• Put bells securely on her socks or booties so she can make sounds when she moves around
• Look in the mirror with baby and attach an unbreakable mirror to his crib
• Walk around with baby and name objects

Play activities for four to eight months

• Read to baby, including lap reading of chunky cardboard or cloth books with big pictures
• Provide safe, simple stacking toys
• Help baby discover new (safe) textures and materials
• Play simple games like pat-a-cake, blowing kisses, or waving good-bye
• Play with brightly colored toys with buttons to push, like toy telephones, music boxes, and busy boxes
• Provide small, safe balls for babies to grasp
• Play with soft blocks
• Have fun with a baby “gym” or activity mat

Play activities for eight months to one year

• Pick up on baby’s lead when she initiates a game or communication
• Let baby make up new versions of familiar games like pat-a-cake
• Read stories about things in baby’s life; use chunky cardboard or cloth books and let baby practice turning pages
• Play games with simple instructions: “pat Daddy’s head”, “Pat baby’s head”
• Provide safe balls of several sizes, push and pull toys, toys with wheels, and roly-poly toys to encourage baby to move around
• Talk, talk, talk to baby—and make a practice of pointing out objects and saying what they are so baby learns about words
• Pour, splash, and play with safe floating toys during bath time
• Play with nontoxic bubble solutions—blow bubbles for baby to watch and touch
• Play music for baby, experimenting with new genres to see what she enjoys and help her clap to rhythms
• Play with toys that can be put together or pulled apart like large, safe pop beads, stacking toys, nesting toys, and interlocking blocks
• For older babies, play with chunky markers and crayons

Provided By Susan J. Oliver, Tropomedia
This information is provided on behalf of the toy experts at your neighborhood toy store.

Most likely, your one-year-old wants nothing more than to be moving around on her own… and finding new ways to “talk” about it. Full of seemingly unlimited energy and curiosity, kids this age make the transition from baby to young child, and become increasingly independent as they move toward two years old.

Children this age often have a hard time sharing and develop a strong sense of “mine”. Unsupervised, their curiosity will get them into things their parents and caregivers don’t intend them to experience, like Mommy’s lipstick or the cat’s litter box. Most play is solitary with some parallel play—that is, playing alongside but not really with another child.

Here are some play activities that work well for toddlers[1]:

• Hide and seek toys or safe object—give her clues on where to find it
• Play with blocks, stacking rings, shape sorters, nesting cups, and containers for filling and dumping out
• Play with moving toys to locations in the room where the toddler needs to cruise or walk to get to them
• Water play during bath time or in the kitchen sink with adult supervision—provide floating toys and containers for filling and pouring
• Play with push or pull toys and balls of safe sizes
• Play on ride-on toys that the toddler uses her feel to steer and propel
• Climbing play—over, under, around, and through safe spaces
• Naming objects around the house, outdoors, in the grocery store, at the zoo, and in picture books
• Care of dolls and stuffed animals
• Singing songs and doing rhyming games or finger plays
• Creating simple books with family pictures or magazine cut-outs
• Play with chunky crayons and markers on large pieces of paper stabilized by taping them to the play surface (wall or table)  

Change would be the best word to describe what to expect from a two-year-old. Sometime you’ll swear she’s growing every which way, right before your eyes. The child will master a long list of new skills and accomplishments—physical, intellectual, emotional, and much more—and will struggle with accepting limits amidst all the new stuff she can do. Every child develops at his or her own pace, but for most typically developing kids, certain milestones are reached within a predictable age range[1].

Two-year-olds are little explorers. So much in the world is new to them and they can’t wait to check it all out. Supervise them carefully! The two-year-old can easily get so absorbed in investigation and discovery that they lose track of the larger environment around them. Some favorite play activities for two-year-olds include:

• Reading books (over and over!)
• Kicking, throwing, and catching large balls
• Climbing jungle gyms or other safe structures
• Swinging, running, balancing, and jumping
• Exploring the natural environment
• Creating pictures and “writing”
• Emerging pretend play, role playing, and dressing up later in the year
• Stringing large beads
• Figuring out simple puzzles
• “Helping” with grown-up activities (cooking, shopping, cleaning)
• Filling and emptying
• Organizing and sorting objects
• Figuring out how things work

It is often said that when parenting young children, the days are long but the years fly by. Moms and Dads may find themselves physically and emotionally worn out after some of their days with a two-year-old and the demands of his emerging independence. And then, before they know it, things may get easier. He’ll be three, and if he’s like many children his age, he’ll be more cooperative and eager to please, though still insecure at times and moody.

His cognitive development shows through most everything he does and his expanding vocabulary helps him talk about it all. His curiosity is aroused by almost anything that crosses his path. Encourage parents to see the world through their three-year-old’s excited eyes and remind them to savor this generally peaceful time with their child.

Three-year-olds are discovering fantasy play and many of them cannot get enough of it.

And with his growing facility in language and other forms of expression, you’ll see lots of new play behaviors. Some favorite play activities for three-year-olds include:[1]

• Playing with other children so they can learn to listen, take turns and share
• Physical coordination activities; for example, games that require hopping on both feet or running or climbing
• Play that encourages their growing language abilities through books, games, songs, science, math and art activities
• Fun ways to build self-reliance skills; for example, learning to dress and undress themselves
• Counting and measuring games
• Active participation with adults in reading-aloud activities
• Exploring the alphabet and print
• Attempting to write messages

Fasten your seat belt and get ready for a new surge of independence![1] You will probably have no problem remembering when your child was two. The word “no!”—spoken by both parent and child—was likely a popular one in homes of two-year-olds.

Guess what. Here it comes again, with a bigger vocabulary wrapped around it and more capacity for the child to argue her case.

Four-year-olds are reaching for independence once again and they have a seemingly endless reserve of energy, growing self-confidence, tons of questions (perhaps “why?” will replace “no!” as your least-favorite word!) and constant chatter. Did we mention that much of that chatter may be silly or whiney or belligerent? But to listen carefully to your four-year-olds…you won’t want to miss the charming, magical flights of imagination and creativity so characteristic of this age.

Here are types of play four-year-olds enjoy:[2]

• Activities that use their imagination. Dressing up and making up stories or shows are popular pastimes.
• Play that involves grouping and sorting objects by size, color, or shape, or identifying missing items in a group or series
• Science and math play, especially investigations into what happens when conditions change. Let them play in the dirt and experience changes in consistency when more water is added to the mud. Experiment with the senses by identifying hidden objects by smell or feel.
• Playing around with language by making up rhymes, acting out stories, telling stories and drawing pictures to illustrate stories.
• Vigorous outdoor activity like playing ball, water play, tumbling, climbing, and dancing.

The five-year-old generally like participating in family and school routines. He is able to share, to make friends, to cooperate, to help with family chores, and show affection to younger siblings. He is eager to please, but may find it difficult to admit if he has done something naughty.

Some favorite play activities for five-year-olds include:[1]

• Arts & crafts: cutting, pasting, painting, coloring. Also simple weaving, sewing, and jewelry making
• Imaginative play with dress-up clothes and props—including lots of acting out family and work roles
• Lap reading and for some children, beginning to read books independently
• Paper-and-pencil games and games involving number, letter, and word recognition
• Computer play
• Real cooking or parts of the process with adult supervision
• Eye-hand coordination activities: ring or bean bag toss, beginning basketball or other sports
• Outdoor games like hopscotch
• Activities with ride-on toys and jungle gyms
• Gardening and lawn-care play
• Musical play

Children in the early primary grades are increasingly competent at taking care of themselves and their personal needs.  They are increasing their cognitive and language skills by leaps and bounds as they learn to read, write, compute, and solve problems.  They may have more mood swings as they become more dependent on friends and less on parents.

Some favorite play activities for children in the early primary grades include:[1]

• Arts & crafts:  cutting, pasting, painting, coloring.  Also increasingly complex weaving, sewing, and jewelry making
• Imaginative play with dress-up clothes and props—including lots of acting out family and work roles
• Lap reading and independent, self-sustained reading
• Paper-and-pencil games and games involving number, letter, and word recognition plus dot-to-dots, number-to-number, and copying and tracing
• Computer play
• Real cooking or parts of the process with adult supervision
• Real carpentry or parts of the process with adult supervision
• Eye-hand coordination activities:  ring or bean bag toss, beginning basketball or other sports
• Outdoor games like hopscotch and jumprope
• Bicycling, roller skating, swimming, climbing, swinging, digging, throwing, catching, batting activities
• Gardening and lawn-care play
• Musical play
• Writing and illustrating books
• Collecting objects
• Card games and board games
• All kinds of games with rules