Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love

by Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn

More than 65 delightful games and activities to jump-start your baby's amazing brainpower

Can simply singing a song or blowing a dandelion under a toddler's nose help her mind to blossom? Can your baby count, remember events, and solve problems even before he can talk? The exciting answer to both questions is yes!

Breakthrough research is revealing the extraordinary inborn abilities of infants.
It is also showing how experiences during the first years of life profoundly
influence intelligence, creativity, language development-and even later
reading and math skills.

Now two psychologists and child development experts-authors of the bestselling Baby Signs-have created a delightful guide for parents based on the most up-to-date knowledge of how babies discover the world. You'll learn how

_ Create a homemade mobile to stimulate your three-month-old's delight in solving problems
_ Play a patty-cake game to help your two-year-old
make logical connections
_ Initiate bedtime conversations that build your child's memory and sense of personal history
_ Develop "Baby Signs" to help your toddler communicate before he or she can talk
_ Stimulate your child's natural number skills with puppets and counting games
_ Use nursery rhymes and special read-aloud techniques to foster reading readiness
_ Nurture budding creativity with humor and fantasy play
_ And much more!

Baby Minds is not another program for creating "super babies." Instead it
builds on activities that babies instinctively love to develop their unique abilities and make your daily interactions full of the joy of discovery-for both of you.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Psychology, Childrens

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2000

Reviews

[Kelly Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is similar to another book I read this year: What's Going On in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life.

Although I enjoyed What's Going on in There?, I *loved* Baby Minds because it focused more on what you can do to help your baby's brain grow. And not in a baby-flashcards sort of way, either. The games they suggest are fun and easy to incorporate into your routine. For example, they recommend modeling some pretend play starting at around 6 months to foster creativity. So we've instituted a 3:00 Puppet Show in our house. My 8-month-old daughter loves it of course, but so do I! 3:00 is about the time I start counting down the minutes til I get childcare help so it takes my mind off the clock for a bit.

I also preferred how this book summarized the relevant research studies in an accessible way. The research they highlighted made me that much more motivated to try the corresponding games. And this book was much lighter on the biological details of development, which I didn't mind at all considering those were the parts of What's Going on in There? I found myself skimming.

Both books had needed reminders to parents that there's no way to be a "perfect parent." The message in Baby Minds is: Just do what works for you, and don't stress out if you're not doing every single game they recommend because every single game won't work for everyone.

This book also has a handy list of all the games at the back, which I find myself using a lot lately. On the weekdays when I'm at home with my daughter all day, I use up all my tricks by the early afternoon--we read books, we take a walk, we have a tickle fest, I feed her solid food. Then I'm bored and she's bored, and that's not good. So the list at the back is helpful for jogging my memory about other things we can do together that will be fun for both of us. In fact, that's exactly how the 3:00 Puppet Show came into existence!

[Bird · Rating 2 out of 5]

My main problem with this book is that the title doesn't match up to the content. The title and description make it seem like the book is devoted to "Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love." In reality, it's a book on child development that just happens to include some games you can play to help enhance their development at each stage.

The book is broken up into informational chapters, with 1-2 pages of games listed at the end of each chapter. There's a list of all the games in the back of the book, which you might just want to flip to if that's what you're looking for.

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was basically a review of things I learned in Child Dev. classes, but I really enjoyed it (it's a quick read)! It talks about current research in an easy to understand way and then gives a lot of practical, inexpensive ideas to help your child realize his or her potential based on the research. I would recommend it to any parent of an infant (the tips are for birth to age three).

[Doris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has some pretty good ideas on what to do to enhance your child's mental development and keep them entertained. My daughter loves playing the game where you tie a string to her foot and then to a mobile and has to kicks to make the mobile move.

[Rosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love, Love, Love IT! I can't refer to this book enough. I'm always looking for new games and activities to engage my children in and this book is filled with them. I have tabs all through it and refer to it all the time (literally, almost every day) for ideas on what to play with my children.

[Cornelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there weren't as many games or activities as I've expected, I found this to be very well structured and very well explained. In fact, I found the insights of each chapter providing enough understanding so that I was able to brainstorm activity ideas myself.

[Katy Lovejoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

some ideas I'm going yo try with my nephew

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great introduction to development of children during their first two years. The authors strive to present research in an engaging manner and use the research as an explanation of why certain games are particularly fun and/or enriching for a child at a particular age. Although I enjoyed reading about the research, the meat of the book is the treatment of fun activities to do with children of different ages. A helpful summary at the back of the book reminds you (with page numbers) of the various activities and the ages at which children respond best/benefit most, grouped by cognitive area. The authors are a perhaps a little too enthusiastic of their own work on baby signs (they have a separate book on this). The overall tone avoids the worst of the gimmicks to make your baby a genius through an enriched environment but has a certain undertone of having fun while preparing your 2-week-old for Harvard.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite parenting/child development books. The authors summarize major child development research in a fun, easy to read, easy to understand manner. Then they offer practical suggestions for related games and activities for babies and toddlers that correspond to each developmental phase. This books is hands-on fun! It doesn't have the pretension of other baby brain development books that promise earlier reading and higher IQs. Instead, this book promotes strategies and activities that engage a child's natural interests and curiousities as they grow, giving them developmentally appropriate mental input and nourishment. I liked the fact that nearly all activities involve interaction with a parent or caregiver, which is, hands-down, the most important brain-booster of all!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of it is pretty simple and self explanatory, but there were some really good ideas for little games you can play, broken down by age (Birth-6 mo, 6+ mo, 12+ mo, 24+ mo, etc). All of those are recapped on the final 5 pages of the book. If I had it to do again, I would have skipped the book and read the last five pages.

[Tessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty good. I felt like it had a lot of fluff, and she could have gotten to the point quicker. But it had some fun suggestions on things you can start teaching your toddler. If anything, they're some fun cheap games to play to keep them entertained.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book. It is nice to see activities that relate to all the child development/psychology studies I read about in school. They are easy to do activities that often are slight variations on things you would be doing already.

[Jocelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome ideas for interacting with your child...very fun ways to increase learning opportunities with your baby/toddler.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read and full of practical development activities. Quite a lot of overlap with Baby Signs though.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Also great ideas for playing with baby right from the start!

[kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good tips on how to get your baby's brain active. What bothered me was this sense that you have to be neurotically teaching your baby nonstop.

[AJ Conroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title is mis-leading in that there aren't actually games, but the book is helpful in describing a baby's mental development and how parents can foster that growth.

[Christine Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focus on ages and stages of development and what to do at each stage.

[Sara Waldrip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it, lots of games to explore with my lo. It's a great book for geeky parents.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned a lot from this book. It goes into detail about the development of a baby's mind and why certain "games" are useful to play at certain ages. Very informative!

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically this book just confirmed that I'm doing everything right thus far. Whoop!

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes: http://roots-andwings.blogspot.com/20...

[Lucy Bilik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for baby mind development assistance. Love suggestion of the games and activities to do with your baby. Would recommend this to parents of curious babies.

[Shelley White-corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did you know that babies start learning in utero? This book will blow YOUR mind!

[Melissa Bader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of ideas. Information on research studies. Informative.

[Andrea]

I learned different games and activities to do with my son based on his age and development.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few of the suggested games seem ludicrous to me, but I like most of it. It's a good reference.

[Jill Weiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was already familiar with most of the information in this bookbut it was concise and well organized. I would recommend it to other parents.