Black & White Resources for your baby
In class we talk a lot about contrast, how our little one’s see the world and what we can do to help their visual development. We’ve got some ideas of black and white resources for playing with your baby to share with you that we find helpful and we’d love to hear about any resources that you discover too.
How does your baby’s vision develop?
When our little ones are born they initially see in black and white (light and shade), the receptors that interpret colour start to interpret colour on a very basic level from about 3 months of age. We can really help them along by introducing them to high contrast images and fabrics that they can see in focus. This video from seeker daily explains how your little one’s vision develops
They then work on developing the skills of teaming their eyes together and around the age of 4 or 5 months they start to work on developing their hand to eye co-ordination. Over the first year of life they are developing their colour scheme and we know that the first colours that they start to see are reds and yellows. By the age of two their visual systems are nearly fully developed with little ones being able to judge distance, identifying objects and discriminating items against backgrounds.
During our classes we have activities to work on lots of visual skills including focusing, tracking, teaming eyes together, visual discrimination, peripheral vision, binocular vision and hand to eye co-ordination and we’d love to share some ideas below on how to help your little one’s visual development.
How to incorporate black and white into play
Black and white books
We love high contrast books as they are a great way to introduce high contrast and they are perfect for tummy time. You can find books by companies like amazing baby that are shown below, Marks and Spencer’s has a cardboard book range, one of which you saw in class this week, and the Wee Gallery do some lovely contrast cards too.
Black and white fabrics
Our favourite place for black and white fabrics is Ikea where you can buy a small section of a high contrast design fabric really cheaply and these are ideal for tummy time. They also do a little range of cushions and pillows too.
Black and white toys
We love our black, white & red chiffons, zebra & panda puppets and toys that have lots of different textures in. Here are a couple of suggestions
Our black and white contrast cards
We have developed a printable with black and white contrast cards and some ideas of how to use them that you are very welcome to print and use.
Have lots of fun with these black & white resources and do try to incorporate high contrast images for your little one’s visual development. As always please ensure that your little one is supervised with toys at all times – keep them at eye sight and arms reach to ensure that they are safe.
Have a great week!