Sensory Input: Hands, Eyes, and Mouth

My baby is just over 3 months old. He is at the stage of noticing his hands and playing with them. He has been sucking on his balled up fists for a week. Then, this hand play graduated to sucking on individual fingers. Now, he is onto the thumbs.

He is fascinated with his hands. He circles them in the air and tracks them with his eyes. He could be entertained for hours . . . until he gets hungry. Even then, he can skip a meal before he gets REALLY hungry and needs a feeding.

At this point, he is touching his own fingers with the other hand. Sometimes he races them to his mouth to see which one would get to his mouth first. This stage is fascinating.

Noticing how acute he is with his hands and his eyes and his mouth, the following is a list of items I have been using to stimulate sensory input:

HANDS

Counting: I use my own hands to model counting from zero to five and then back from five to zero. When he got used to me using these fingers and would look away, I would include the American Sign Language signs for "six," "seven," "eight," "nine," and "ten." By using my hands to count, he seems to have gained more interest in his own fingers.
Ambidexterity: I noticed that I was using my right hand a lot to show him how to count. I started seeing him reflect this back to me. He started circling his right hand in the air, tracking it, and seemed to ignore his left hand. I realized my error and started to use my left hand as well. He has now been using his left hand more. Yet, he favors the right hand. Today, I started to notice him noticing the whole length of his right arm, not just his right hand. I'm looking forward to seeing him notice the whole length of his left arm soon, too.
Open-Close: I modeled with my hands how to open them up with all five fingers showing and how to close them up into fists. Prior to me showing this to him, he was constantly balling up his fists. After showing him the capacity to open and close his hands, he started to also open up his hands so that his palms showed. This, of course, was far easier for me to go into the creases and clean his hands.
Touch: We dress him in cotton, wool, microfleece, and polyester clothing. He gets skin-to-skin touch at least a couple of times daily. I am looking forward to him distinguishing texture when he does get it. For now, he definitely gets the difference between hot and cold, although he may not know the sign language for it yet.

EYES

Colors: I make it a point to expose a vast variety of colors. Although naming the colors at this stage may be too much content too soon, I pick a color of the day and repeat the color's name as much as I can remember to do so. At this point, though, I really just show him a variety.
Dark-light contrasts: Stripes and other juxtapositions of dark-light colors seem to captivate him. When I have his attention, I point out the colors' names again.
Modeling: I try not to put my hands to my own eyes to rub them if I feel itchy there. I want to reinforce the habit of not doing so at a young age so as to reduce the risk of pink eye infection in the future. Plus, right now, his fingernails need constant trimming. I don't want those fingernails anywhere near his eyes.
Demonstrations: After I do the cloth diapering laundry, I fold them right in front of him and demonstrate how to do so while vocalizing what I am doing. At first this was very convenient and seemed to hold his attention. I got a lot of these diapers pre-folded and there were many (100 per week!). Then he started to lose his attention span and allow his eyes to wander off. So now I fold them right in front of him when he is buckled on the diaper changing table. This new system seems to keep his attention.
Crossing the Mid-line: Because there are benefits to right-brain and left-brain correspondence in Applied Kinesiology, I make it a point to exercise his opposite arm and opposite leg. I also make sure he crosses his arms and legs over his midline. I also wave things slowly from one side to the other side right in front of him so that his eyes also cross the midline of his body.

MOUTH

Sucking: He seems to explore a lot with his mouth and has started teething. So I allow him to explore his hands with his mouth.
Tasting: We have not started this process yet. We are going to start letting him taste solid food and drink fruit juice when he is at least 6 months old. For now, he has only tasted commercial formula and breastmilk.

So that's it for now with the sensory input. I will post updates as we progress.

Cheers :-)
Gloria