The concept of quality over quantity is quickly forgotten when expecting a new baby. Parents are showered with all kinds of toys that they simply do not need for baby’s first year. We all tend to over-complicate things.
Why overwhelm yourself and baby with toys when it is simply unnecessary? A teether, rattle and two wheeled toy are the three essential set of toys that baby needs for creative play while developing their sensory and motor skills for their first year.
The Teether
As a new parent you will soon discover that whatever you give your baby will end up in their mouth. Babies receive pleasure from the sense of taste and use their mouths to experience their new world. When baby grasps the teether and brings it to their mouth this is helping them work on their sensory skills. The teether will also be a key item that will bring peace to your household when teething begins!
The 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. It will provide the gratification of movement and repetition, giving your child the playful interest in creating sound and movement with their body.The rattle gives a comforting innocent natural sound that is not battery operated. You want your child to imprint their own creativity with their own noises and movements.
The Two Wheeled Toy
As baby develops into finer motor skills such as crawling, cruising or even walking give them something that they can move along with by simply pushing and rolling on the floor. This provides them 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 giving children a simple shape on wheels your child can imprint their own sounds, colors, and creativity onto the wheeled toy rather than the toy providing them with everything. Getting toys that are not machine-driven that maintains the innocence of childhood are best for brain function, exercise, and growing imagination.
This basic set of toys are not only good for baby, they are also great for parents too. If you stick to these key items parents will have a clutter-free home and less time will be taken up with toy clean up. Also, let’s face it there will be no bags of toys waiting around the house to be sent of to a resale shop or trash.
Navigating the abundance in children products can be intimidating and overwhelming. The innocent beauty seems to be lost. Simply step back and ask yourself, what do you really need to have to create a nurturing environment? You do not really need much, just love and simplicity.
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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. As an arbiter of children’s style and luxury market authority, founder Gary Osborne has redefined the traditional baby gift registry with products that are timeless, stylish, and high quality, each with handcrafted charm, eco-responsibility, and USA-made appeal. Soon after he and his husband 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.
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.
