Every couple wants to provide the best for their newborn. As such, it’s not surprising that the first year is your child’s most impressionable year. To help parents select the ideal products, I often suggest the following tips:
- Provide your baby with the most beautiful items – always being mindful of what comes into their sensory world. These experiences will have lasting impressions.
- Do not provide too much color – and present your child with the soothing colors of nature rather than synthetic colors. Bright colors early on become too stimulating.
- Present your baby with natural materials that have substance and a bit of weight. This gives the child a sense of what is real rather than manufactured.
- Most importantly, be selective and do not provide an overabundance of choice. Keep it simple. You will see that when a child has fewer choices in front of her, she will have focused play.
Here are 3 milestones and 3 toys that can meet your baby’s needs during each stage of development within the first 12 months.
3-4 Months: Baby Rattle
The rattle is a time-honored first toy that spans many cultures and generations. Rattles offer infants their first opportunities to create noise with an object under their own power. Also, they offer a child awareness of their physical body and allow them to experience the sense of touch, hearing and sight with this sculpted work of functional art. A rattle will provide the gratification of movement and repetition, giving your child the playful interest in creating sound and movement with his body.
At Oliver & Adelaide our Curly Maple Rattle is sculpted by a seasoned artist located in New Hampshire. It is made of curly maple wood and is truly a treat for the senses. Every generation in the family will enjoy holding this piece and enjoying its fine craftsmanship. But remember! It’s really for the baby!
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6 Months: Teether
As a new parent you will soon discover that whatever you give your baby, it will end up in her mouth. Babies eat, sleep and receive pleasure from the sense of taste using their mouths to experience their new world. There is an overabundance of chew toys out there, however we have found the best one that is most versatile and beautiful.
This teether from Oliver & Adelaide is crafted from durable, North American hardwood finished in a natural oil and wax finish. It features an unbleached, un-dyed organic cotton yarn tail.
Your child can switch back and forth from the hard ring, to the soft, textured tail of this safe and environmentally friendly product. For extra comfort, we suggest dampening the tail and sticking it in the freezer for a bit. In addition, the tail can be removed and tossed in the washing machine, but we recommend hand washing both tail and ring with dish soap.
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9-12 months: Personalized Wooden Truck
Here is a perfect object to present to your child between 9-12 months. He might be crawling, cruising or even walking now so give him something that he can move along with him by pushing and rolling. This provides him with a sense of special awareness, physical balance and leaves the world open for the beginnings of imaginative play, which is vital at this stage. By providing him with a simple shape on wheels your son can imprint his own sounds, colors, and creativity onto the truck rather than the toy providing him with all that.
With the perfect proportions for his little hands and lovingly crafted from sustainably sourced hardwoods, this toy is super smooth, and drives like a charm.
This item is handcrafted in Minnesota by artisans who never use paints or stains. They simply coat hardwood toys with their own homegrown organic food-grade oil to bring out the natural beauty. A perfect – and safe – way for little ones to cruise in style!
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Gary Osborne, founder and creative director of Oliver & Adelaide is a leading online purveyor of personalized luxury American-made clothing, toys, furnishings & decor for babies and toddlers. The shop features over 100 hand-crafted American-made baby and toddler gifts perfect for the new mom looking for the unique Baby Shower Registry. In addition, Oliver & Adelaide assembles the most exquisite luxury Baby Gift Packages that cannot be found anywhere else. Soon after he and his partner had their two children, Gary became an art educator specializing in childhood development. Now, his children, Oliver & Adelaide, are his inspiration for giving other parents the gift of beautifying their baby’s world with the only the best. Previously, Gary worked for more than a decade as a fashion designer in New York City.
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The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blog contributor’s. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. Writers may have conflicts of interest, and their opinions are their own.