The Baby Dome is a sustainably-made wooden dome shaped (three-legged) baby play gym which comes standard with a set of 6 specially designed high contrast cards. Made only with baby safe materials (non-toxic). The dome has nine holes positioned on its legs to dangle high contrast objects, or to make a ‘dangle forest’. 3 card clips are positioned on a slide design to secure the high contrast cards on the legs of the dome.
Play gyms are suitable from birth to about 12 months of age. The baby dome is designed to meet your child’s developmental needs through their first year of life.
Material: Birch plywood
Developmental benefits of using a play gym:
- Cognitive development:
- Children (including infants) learn through play, they can discover through cause and effect and primary circular reactions (when a child discovers an action/sensation and intentionally repeats this action at a later stage.
- Baby gym’s focus on arousing the imagination and mental development as they become curious about their world around them.
- An infant's attention span is short (around about two/three minutes per year of their age). A play gym offers varying activities to focus on for short periods of time and often, depending on the stimulus, aid stimulation in the calm alert state.
- Visual-perceptual development:
- The high contrast cards and dangling animals aid the development of depth-perception.
- As their visual perception improves, they are encouraged to start to reach out and grab the objects.
- Improved hand-eye coordination, which lays the foundation skills needed to sit, crawl and walk.
- Motor development:
- The dangling objects encourage infants to reach out and grab.
- Reaching and grasping encourages babies to develop their muscles in their arms, legs, backs, tummies and necks. This also stimulates fine motor skills used for grasping and holding items later on.
- Baby gyms encourage gross muscle development through tummy time
- First babies will learn to bring their hands together at the midline in order to hold a toy and later they will reach across the midline of the body. Crossing the midline of the body is a vital skill that helps babies learn to crawl later on. Bilateral skills (two handed coordination) and hand dominance is also developed.