Supporting Your Baby's Developments
Choose a timetable
Baby Month 9 – What to Expect
By the ninth month, many babies have their own schedules, their own personalities and their own routines. Some will attempt to talk at this early age; some will even walk at this young age. You can watch as baby plays with toys independently for short periods of time. Baby can:
- Reach for toys that are close by
- Grasp small items
- Go from laying down to sitting independently
- Recognize self
- Will often try to take the utensil while feeding but isn’t quite ready to self feed at this point
What to do
Use the timetable below to support their developments and avoid developmental delays.
hOW TO SUPPORT Baby's DEVELOPMENTS
Crawling fast is quite an art now for most babies. Some will even attempt to pull themselves up into a standing position if their legs are strong enough, even if they cannot walk yet. While some babies miss out the crawling phase they will still get around, either by bottom shuffling or rolling around.
Baby’s drive to discover new things, will start to reach new heights as they yearn to stand and discover more. Baby gates are a must and real safety precautions need to be taken as baby will pull at things and try to stand up, even knocking over small furniture.
She likes to manipulate things in her hands, bang them togther and transfer things from one hand to another. Although, she is better co-ordinated, there are things she is not able to do which will cause her frustration.
She is able to experience the world around her through all her senses now, and her senses are bombarded all day long providing her new knowledge and experience. For this reason, anything new will cause her to become tired easily.
Baby now starts to say the odd word now. And is able to show her understanding when words are heard. For example, she will understand what you mean when you are going to change her, give her milk, a bath and so on.
Baby will continue to grow more attached to the people she is more familiar with and prefer to be in their company than others.
She will be louder than before and cry for people she misses or if strangers are seen.
Baby can now recognise herself and understands she is an individual. She will have preferences and will slowly start to become non-compliant from now on. At this age, she will experience the word, ‘no’ often and start to think about why she is being restricted and test boundaries.
Her knowledge and understanding is developing rapidly. The more she experiences and gets involved, the more she learns. Outings and excursions are a source of delight as are new experiences, which she will fixate on more intently, rather than lose interest quickly like before.
7 – 9 Months
Continue to use the resources from 4-6 months too as well as the resources below.
Ball Skills
Strengthen baby’s arms and legs playing with balls. Start with the ball games below.
Obstacle Course
If your baby is able to crawl, create a few challenges to develop their skills further.
If you're happy
Action rhymes are a great way to exercise your baby and learn language. Try the rhymes below.
Pen holding
If babies see adults using pens a lot, they will soon want to explore and investigate them too. So make pens available, for them to use and manipulate in their hands.
Dinner drummers
Use everyday equipment to make music. Tap out a beat and encourage your baby to do the same. This will strengthen their hands and develop rhythm.
Where does this go?
Jigsaws, shape sorters and other such toys develop baby’s fine motor skills as well as cognition. Show them other things that go together too.
Photo cards
16 coloured pictures, to focus and strenghten your baby’s eye colour receptors. Hold the pictures 18 inches away from them. Alternate with the black and white images.
Magic Sand
Easy to hold, they come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and can be used to perform different activities. A great resource for independent discovery.
Tower Blocks
Building towers and knocking them down is a great activity that babies love, especially knocking down your towers. Use blocks and show them what to do.
Heuristic play
Babies are fascinated by the natural world around them. Gather twigs, pinecones, pebbles etc. for baby to explore. Make sure they have been sterilised for safety.
How does it feel?
Babies mouths are more sensitive than their hands, so they put everything into their mouths to learn how they feel. Give them different materials to explore.
Food time
Babies start to eat solids from now, so introduce your child to different foods to develop their taste buds and, even if they don’t eat the food, it will enhance their experience.
3D story telling
Use stuffed toys, puppets or animal play sets and tell your baby stories.
Five little monkeys
This and other action songs are a great way of interacting with baby and teaching them new language.
Head shake no
Help your baby start to communicate with you by using actions first.
Puppet Time
Puppets are a great way to teach social skills.
Dance Time
Dancing with your baby around the room develops social bonds.
Social Interactions
Encourage interactions with others to develop social skills.
Baby Books
Fabric books and bath books are a great way to get your baby interested in books and potentially reading later on.
What does this?
Babies start to understand the cause and effect from now. If they press a button, something happens. Develop this further.
Talk about Fruit
Fruit are a great finger food. They are nutritional and come in many colours and textures, and are great to talk about.
