Activities for 11 month old babies

• Help your baby understand his world by regularly naming objects, singing familiar songs and reading books.
• Play simple clapping games - Hold his hands and clap them to the simple rhythm of songs such as twinkle, twinkle little star. This helps develop coordination and rhythm. Get more ideas in our article Games for babies.
• To encourage the development of sharing (right now your baby is still too young to fully understand this), play giving and taking games with her toys. Babies at this age love to hand you things and get them back. This sets up the idea for later development of sharing. This is also a great way to model manners by saying "Thank you" when you receive the toy back.
• To help develop social skills use one of your baby's favorite stuffed toys. Encourage your baby to kiss the bear goodbye or give him a hello hug. When leaving the house you could tell him to wave bye bye to the teddy bear.
• If your little one has taken his first steps he may be ready for a push along toy.
• Allow your baby time to practice holding small blocks in his hand and to play with the idea of dropping them. This is a skill babies love to learn. The discovery that they can deliberately open up the fingers and drop an object is a much loved one! Be prepared to pick up lots of toys over and over and over again as they master this skill.
• Give your baby opportunities to practice putting food in his own mouth. Usually at this age they prefer to grasp food with the fingers. Hence the name finger foods.
• It's a great time to set up some social play experiences for your baby. Although your baby will still want to stay close to you he will enjoy watching other babies play.
• Babies at this age get a real sense of fun from exploring kitchen cupboards. Set aside a cupboard with a few pots and pans that your baby can explore and play with.
• Let your baby turn pages in books. Board books, vinyl or cloth ones work best at this age. This allows a baby to become familiar with how books are read, by turning the pages. For some great suggestions for books for this age group, see Books your baby will love or Books your toddler will love. Read books which show concepts such as big and small, up and down, in and out.
• Rotate your baby's toys. They enjoy exploring new and interesting objects at this age.

Other articles:

Importance of play for babies
Music and your baby
11 month old milestones
First finger foods
Cookbooks for babies and toddlers

By Nicole Rawson Huff

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