Baby Space

A special space for babies and their carers.

How it works

Accompany young babies within Baby Space so they may use sensory stimulus materials provided within the enclosed area.

Things to try or ask around the exhibit

Babies love to watch other babies and your face. Try moving down to your baby’s eye level so they can study your facial features and expressions.

Background

Babies explore the world by touching, listening, smelling and of course tasting! This is called
sensorimotor development.

Touch uses a baby’s largest organ—their skin. Touch is a vital source of stimulation and information for babies.

Visual stimulation (such as pictures and mobiles) trains a baby’s brain to interpret light waves into three dimensional images.

Movement such as rolling, stretching, climbing and crawling extends a baby’s learning ability and motor skills. Finger play improves a baby’s fi ne motor skills and eye-hand coordination.

When babies listen, they learn to convert sound signals into meaningful words in the language centre of their brain (Wernicke’s area). So be careful of what you say! Adults often use a sing-song tone of voice when talking to young children. This seems to help babies solve the ‘language problem’ of decoding a stream of noise into meaningful words with patterns.

When babies make cooing, babbling and gurgling sounds, they are experimenting with mouth and tongue movement for later speech. Newborns also use the sense of smell to recognise their mother’s scent.