Activities to Enhance Your Child's Cognitive Development: 6-9 Months

Let Her Discover Sound

Let your baby discover that different objects have different sounds by giving her items like a bell, rattle, xylophone, or drum.

Stimulate Her Senses

Put your baby on a quilt made of different fabrics or with different patterns. She will be able to see and touch the difference.

Make a Toy Box

Fill a box with objects made of different materials, such as metal, plastic, and wood. Let your baby dump out the box and explore the contents. She'll notice they feel different, and when she hits the objects with a wooden spoon, she'll listen to the different sounds they make.

Teach Her Cause and Effect

Play cause-and-effect games, such as filling a container with objects, water, or sand, and then dumping it out or building a tower with blocks and knocking it down. (She may never tire of that game!)

Have a Treasure Hunt

Partially hide an object under a blanket and ask your baby where it is. At this age, children are able to mentally recreate the whole object even If they can see only part of it.

Expose Her to Texture

Give your baby a pile of differently textured clothes and linens. Let her explore the differences between smooth cotton sheets and nubby cotton towels, between leather and cloth belts, between rubber sandals and canvas sneakers.

Raising Your Child

Raising Your Child: The Complete Illustrated Guide is an information-packed guide that leads parents through the ever changing maze of new behaviors, developments, and challenges present in a child's first six years. It is filled with essential information, expert advice, practical solutions, and key choices to ensure a child's healthy development for their first six years -- and set them up for success in later developmental stages. In addition to understanding their child's stage of development, readers are given parenting techniques and activities they can use with their child to maximize physical, emotional, intellectual, and behavioral development at every age and stage.

• Buy Raising Your Child: The Complete Illustrated Guide