​During their first few months of life, one of the most crucial things for your baby is tummy time and floor play. This is their first opportunity to learn how to move their bodies against gravity being outside of the womb. Not only is tummy time beneficial for gross motor development, it is also beneficial to many other systems in your baby’s body. During tummy time  and floor play your baby learns to explore, figures out independent movement while gaining strength, and gains motivation.

Need some tummy time tips? Try these out!
● When burping, slightly recline yourself back. These slight instances of muscle activation are helping introduce strengthening to the extensor muscles.
● Have your baby on your chest while you are reclining back in a chair/on the couch. This also promotes activation to those extensor muscles. You can increase this time slightly each day, helping increase their tolerance to tummy time.
● As your baby grows (6 weeks or so), try tummy time over a cushion or a boppy. Then, lower the amount of support - from cushion/boppy to a rolled towel, then to flat on the floor. Assist in their success by remaining engaged with them throughout their time on the floor!
● Try to aim for 3-5 minutes at least 3-5x during the day. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t achieve this every time! It is normal to build up tolerance and continue to increase tummy time.
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Do not let tummy time stress you out! Use this as a time to engage with your baby and document their growth along the way. You’re doing a great job!

 By: Lauren Segrest, LPTA

Throughout your pregnancy, you may hear many people stress the importance of tummy time once your little one comes into the world. But why is this position so important? Why do we stress aiming to get ‘x’ amount of tummy time per day?

When a baby is in the womb, they are curled in the fetal position (a flexed position of the body). With their body being flexed for months during development this puts their posterior muscles in a lengthened position. During tummy time, this position allows the anterior muscles
to be lengthened rather than the posterior. They are contracting those posterior muscles to gain strength for further developmental milestones.

As a baby develops the proper balance between the anterior and posterior musculature, they end up working together to progress them to age-appropriate milestones. These muscles are crucial to strengthen and maintain in order to achieve positions that require proper core stability and coordination. Without proper trunk strengthening, it will be difficult to achieve further positions, transitions, and activities.

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​Allison Galle Norris, M.S., CCC-SLP
Speech-Language Pathologist

#1. In my experience, this ball tower toy (and those like it, I believe Melissa and Doug have one, but I haven't personally tried it) is SUCH a favorite with the little ones. You can practice several different tasks with this toy, requesting, following simple directions, color identification/matching, imitating actions, imitating sounds, imitating exclamatory words...the list goes on and on! Because the balls travel down the ramp when pushed through, it provides a lot of visual interest as well. 

#2. Shape sorters are great for the 1-3 age group. You can work on skills like matching, color and shape identification, directional words like "in", "out", "turn," etc. You can talk about concepts like "oops! Doesn't fit, try it again!" Similar to the ball and hammer toy, you can work on requesting, following simple directions, answering yes/no questions. This one is especially great to help your little ones gain some patience with tasks. You can help them as needed, slowly giving them more and more time to figure it out before you jump in to help.

#3. These are the best bubbles of all time. Seriously, they are beautiful, thick, resilient bubbles (but not to resilient). They work great in bubble machines and bubble guns, and even just the old fashion way with the included wand. The bubbles linked here come in a 2 liter container, which is pretty important if you go through bubbles like I do! To help elicit language, bubbles are great for requesting, imitative words like "pop!" Exclamations like "wow!" and "oops!" Even the most disengaged of little ones are fascinated by bubbles. It can also be good oral motor practice to round lips and blow through the wand!

#4. This toy is great because of its simplicity, and you could really use any similar toy to serve this purpose - as long as toddlers can put things IN and take things OUT. You can hide the coins around the room and talk about how you're looking, walking, etc. You can dramatically say "I found it!" when you spot a coin, and then run back to the pig to put them inside. So many verbs and prepositions can be modeled to your little one through a toy like this. Placing the coin in the bank and the subsequent sounds/singing that occurs will act as motivators to the child, while everything they do to get the coins can be the language part of the activity. Remember - it's less about what the TOY DOES, and much more about what you DO WITH the toy together!

#5. For our final toy, I have chosen a book. I know what you're thinking: "hey, that's not a toy, it's a book!" but I would argue that it's important to have developmentally appropriate books accessible during play time, so that makes it a toy in my mind. Books help to develop language too, ya know! This one specifically is great because of all the noises throughout the story. In this book, we learn all about what noises Mr. Brown is capable of, which can lead to some great imitation of sounds, which is an important step in language development. Encourage your child to "mooooooo!" like Mr. Brown can. Make it fun and silly!