6-12 Months Play: How It Encourages Development
As your sweet baby grows into an infant, and then eventually a toddler, play will continue to be an important part of their cognitive, social, emotional and physical development.
Play is one of the main ways that children learn about their environment and the world around them. It is how they process information, gain knowledge, practice trial and error, and develop vital life skills. Play builds cognitive skills, language acquisition, self regulation and creativity.
It’s Play Time!
Play has been an important part of my daughter’s routine, virtually since we brought her home from the hospital. In her first few days, we began reading to her, doing tummy time and holding up soft crinkly toys meant to stimulate her senses.
These early steps were deliberate and useful to help expose her to types of play meant to stimulate and encourage her learning and development.
In a previous post I shared about ‘6 Types of Play for the First 6 Months‘. This post highlighted 6 ways you can play with your baby, and the importance of each type of play during baby’s first 6 months of life.
Let’s Talk About 6-12 Months Play!
In this post, I’m excited to share what comes next! This post will share how we changed our play routine to match our daughter’s development, as she grew from a baby to an infant, and beyond.
Below, I highlight some of the ways you can engage your 6-12 month old during playtime, including specific activities we love to work into our daily routine.
Looking for toy suggestions? I have included some of our household favourites too!
*In this post I share affiliate links to products that we use in our home. If you make a purchase, I may receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It is how I keep this site running, and provide you with informative posts and recommendations. You can read my full disclosure here.
6-12 Months Play!
Activities, Toys and Types of Play to Include in Your Little One’s Day!
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Gross Motor Play
As your little one practices and perfects their gross motor skills, play will be one of the key ways that they gain strength and balance, and eventually master important milestones, such as learning to sit up, crawl, stand, walk, and even run. Gross motor skills involve the large muscles of the body that are used to execute the gross motor tasks mentioned above.
Whether your little one is already meeting some of these milestones, or still working on the early stages of mastering these skills, you can design types of play that will assist them to get practice.
Gross motor skill play involves helping your child to work on aspects of these skills under your supervision. This involves guiding them by creating stations or obstacles that encourage them to use the large muscles of their body.
Some of our favourite gross motor activities for 6-12 month play include designing obstacle courses using pillows or boxes, created to encourage crawling practice.
Another ideas is to create a mini area with varied height furniture to practice cruising with the aim of helping with standing and walking.
Our favourite gross motor skill toys for 6-12 months play include:
2. Fine Motor Skill Play
Just as important as gross motor skill development at the 6-12 months stage, is the development of fine motor skills. Fine motor skills involve the coordination of small muscles, in conjunction with the eyes, hands and fingers.
Infants need lots of practice to develop these skills, especially from 6 months on when they begin trying to grasp smaller objects such as solid food, cutlery, smaller toys and books.
It is possible to work fine motor skill play into your 6-12 month old infant’s day in many ways! Continuous practice and exposure will surely help them grasp these tasks quicker and more efficiently.
Here are some simple methods:
When introducing solid foods give your infant an opportunity to use safe cutlery designed for baby’s little hands (silicone works well), even if they only hold them and don’t actually get any food on them!
This is a great way to help them to practice grasping, mouth mapping and other important skills required to eventually eat independently.
Better yet, let them get even dirtier and use their hands to help develop their pincer grasp, the important skill required to grab food with their finger and thumb. It is a vital skill developed during the 6-12 months range, essential for picking up small objects.
Other great toys to promote fine motor skill development include:
3. Guided Play (Adult Led Play)
Guided play, which is play led by you or another individual, is a great way to show and teach your little one how to use various toys or complete activities with you guidance.
Again, there are many ways to get involved as a parent during playtime. Simply engaging with your child during their playtime provides numerous benefits. They learn the proper use for their toys, even if they don’t get it right at first, they learn about role play, mimicking, and socialization.
Let’s Talk Specifics!
Peek a boo is one of my favourites for the 6-12 months play range, especially for younger infants, who will simply watch you at first but will eventually learn to play along too. This can be a lot of fun to watch them giggle and look at you expectantly as you cover your face and then expose it to them.
As your infant gets closer to the one year mark, give them many opportunities to watch and then mimic you doing different everyday activities. For example, when brushing their hair, brush it and explain what you are doing. Afterwards, hand them the brush and allow them to practice on you, themselves or a toy.
This gives them the opportunity to learn real world uses for objects that they encounter daily. The same idea can be used to safe objects in the kitchen or other household items.
Singing songs is another great example of guided play. Teaching your 6-12 month old infant through song is one of the best ways to help them retain information in a fun way. But singing is more than just fun, it encourages bonding, and helps to expand your little ones vocabulary, while teaching them about creative language and rhyme.
Some of my daughter’s favourite songs to sing together are ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’, ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ and ‘Old McDonald. These are particularly fun for her because she loves the hand gestures I do while singing them.
Some fun toys for guided 6-12 months play time include:
Sing along book
4. Language Play
Speaking of language development, play geared at developing your little ones language abilities is of vital importance during the 6-12 months range, when they are working on babbling and eventually saying first words.
How do you strengthen these abilities through play you might ask? My favourite way is through reading! If you’ve read other posts on my blog then you know I am a big advocate of reading to baby from birth. Check out this post here!
Expanding your infant’s reading library, and encouraging daily reading is an awesome way to help them learn new words, identify objects in books and learn about prose and expressive communication. Try making reading a fun part of your daily routine by reading a new book at nap and bedtime.
Speaking to your little one frequently is another form of “play” that helps to develop language during this stage. Find ways to converse with them constantly throughout the day, like naming their body parts while changing their diaper, or explaining what you see and hear during your walks will surely help them to pick up new words as they grow.
Some of the books we are loving during the 6-12 months stage include:
5. Independent Play
Independent play is extremely important to your growing infant during the 6-12 months stage of their development. It provides them with time to practice skills on their own, while exploring their interests and fueling their imagination. Independent play helps to build patience, resilience, persistence and problem solving skills, all of which are very important soft skills that will benefit them throughout their life.
Now, when I say independent play, I don’t mean leave your child alone in a room, unsupervised, to do what they want. Infants at this age should always be supervised, however, providing them with a bit of space to play without you, while you are still close by and observing is a great way to tackle independent play.
Carve out a chunk of time each day for your child to play independently, while being monitored. Creating a safe play environment for independent play can take on many forms, and the length of time will also vary by age.
Ensure that you have babyproofed that area and removed any potential hazards. To help guide this process, check out my post on tips for babyproofing your home, here.
Try This!
Independent play at 6-12 months can mean having your baby in a playpen with safe and appropriate toys, while you sit near watching them play. Alternatively, for older infants who are crawling or walking and may need more space to move around, having them play on the ground in front of you while you sit and observe from the couch can also work.
Provide your 6-12 month old with age appropriate toys, activities, books or items that they can engage with and explore safely on their own.
Some of Kaejah’s favourite items for independent play include board books, sound books, light and sound toys, blocks and stacking toys.
Check out some of these for 6-12 months play below:
6. Indoor Sensory Play
In a previous post, I talked about the many benefits of sensory play. You can check out that post here.
Indoor sensory play stimulates learning through the senses and helps your child to process stimuli in their environment.
There are so many simple, yet fun, ways to add more sensory play to your infant’s day in the home. From 6-12 months, your little explorer will likely become more curious and more mobile in the home. This is the perfect combination and reason to encourage more sensory play.
Let them touch different textures around your home (think blankets, throws, cushions, carpets), let them bang on some pots and pans, or create some simple sensory bags with items that you can find in your kitchen. We love to use peas and pasta in ours!
If you prefer to buy some sensory toys and books for indoor play, here are a few that’ we like for 6-12 months play:
7. Outdoor Sensory Play
Outdoor sensory play is another great way to stimulate the senses, while teaching your little one about all the exciting things they can see and find in the great outdoors. Depending on where you live or what season it is at the time, the possibilities are virtually endless!
Let you infant help you in the garden or take them on a walk. There are so many new things to see, touch, smell and learn about. Call out the name of different items before letting them touch, smell, crush and examine different objects.
My daughter loves to pick flowers and leaves, although playing in the sand is probably her absolute favourite.
If you live near a beach like we do, don’t forget to carve out some time for beach days. Check out this post for some tips on essentials to pack!
Here are some of our favourite toys for outdoor sensory play at 6-12 months:
8. Excursions
Excursions and activities are wonderful ways to let your little one burn some energy and build up their sleep pressure, which can encourage sound and restful sleep. Plan fun excursions in your area or even activities in your own backyard. The park, neighbourhood walks, the zoo, the beach, local attractions and other child friendly excursions are all great options.
What fun excursions does your little one love? These days, Kaejah is enjoying walking in the park and of course, beach and pool time.
Here are some great items to bring along during your favourite outdoor activities:
Final Thoughts
Play is such an important part of your child’s development during the 6-12 month age range. What is your favourite 6-12 month play idea that you’re looking forward to trying with your baby?
I hope that the various types of play I have discussed has given you some ideas for ways to encourage fun and learning for your infant or toddler.
Want more ideas on great toys and activities to encourage healthy and age appropriate development? Check out some of my other posts here.
I Would Love to Hear from You
I love to hear from my readers! Please share in the comments any toys or activities your little one loves during this age range. Have questions? Contact me or leave it in the comments.
I love this – parents who read this will really be able to learn more about the value of play and types of play for their kids. Thanks for sharing!
This is interesting, I don’t have kids yet but I was playing with my little brother when he was a baby. I let him play alone for some moments as well.
Great post for future reference! Thanks for sharing!
Great post and very helpful! Playing definitely goes hand and hand with development. I never thought about creating an obstacle course to help with development skills, that is an awesome idea! Thank you!