Know about hide & seek for kids, learning with interactive games and how and why to play hide & seek with kids.
Hide & Seek
At about eight months, children start understanding that things and people exist even when they are not in direct line of sight. They may toss a toy on the floor and then stoop down to see where it falls. They take more interest in looking around and trying to find a thing or a person after they have left their place, perhaps just to be hidden from the baby. They start developing object permanence. The downside of this realization is that she may cry for you every time you try to leave the baby but on the upside, you can experiment with many more new games to play with the baby.
Hide & Seek is not only an interactive game but also gives a sense of satisfaction to the child, once she finds what she is looking for. Your baby will also learn in time, where to find certain things and will start observing where a particular things such as a toy or a book is kept. Until your baby can walk or crawl enough to play the game as we know, here are some variations that babies love to play with their parents:
- At first, just cover your eyes or baby�s eyes to play �Peek-a-boo� or �Where�s Mommy?� and then move your hand away saying �Here�. Later, you can hide your face using baby blanket and then graduate to the next level where you can hide behind a doorway or the couch before you make a comeback. This will also teach your baby to learn that you are there for her even if she cannot always see you.
- Tuck the teddy or the favorite doll of the baby in her blanket and then pull it back and then greet the baby and hug it together with your baby. Babies chuckle and get excited to find the teddy back and may want to do it again and again. Slowly, babies learn to do it themselves. In the beginning, you may leave a part of the teddy out of the blanket to make it easier for the baby to locate. Later, baby will learn where to look for it and you can cover it completely. With increasing skills of the baby to locate, you can try hiding the teddy or doll at other places too.
- While you are in a kitchen or doing some work, where you want the baby to be still, you can put her in a high chair and let her play with spoons. Then you can put the spoons in a plastic container and let her try to pull-off the lid to get back the spoons. You can also put baby blocks in a container with a lid easy to pull off and teach your baby to put back the blocks in it after playing. It is better to acquire good habits as early as possible.
