What to do with a 4 month old?

[Gems2181]

Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advice on what I should be doing with my 4 month old to help her development.

She is such a chilled out baby she would happily play under her play gym for the majority of the day if I let her! We try to do tummy time every day and she is holding her head up nice and strongly now. We laugh and smile and play with toys.

During the week we already go to Rhyme Time and baby swimming. We have done a number of classes like baby massage and soft play.

However, I'm not sure if there is anything else I should be doing to help her development and mobility. Sorry, that might sound like a daft question, but I'm a first time mum with very little exposure to small children either.

Any advice gratefully received.

Your doing great! I found taking them for walks good as stimulates senses, singing songs, making funny faces, simplicity is best at this age, also lots of touchy feely books and objects, door bouncers or jumperoos are good too at this age, especially if she's got good head control.

Watching with interest!

Just what you are doing sounds great.

Later on, you could take her to a baby group where she can roll around and play with other children, but at 4 months they aren't interested in that.

Tummy time is great prep for crawling.

Chatting to her, singing, letting her explore different toys all sound lovely

I found this was a good resource:

www.babycentre.co.uk/c25004199/baby-games

Don't overthink it. I exhausted myself going to different groups and trying to entertain DS at that age. He hated most of it and it was defo more for me than him. I now have an 11wo DD and I'm shocked at how 'entertained' she is by watching me and DS going about his life while attached to me in a sling.

I wish I had stuck DS in a sling and done stuff I really enjoyed like shopping, hikes, nice lunches at that age as once he started moving it was game over.

I used to take DD out to the park and get her out to look at the ducks/ water/ flowers. Her absolute favourite from about 3-7mths was me taking her to the local big adventure playground in the holidays on a nice day, I'd get her out and walk round with her and she was mesmerised by the kids running about, the noises, watching kids on the swings etc. As well as getting out for a good look at the bit where the dogs go in the water. In the afternoons I'd drive to a supermarket/ shopping centre with her facing forward in her sling and she loved that too, she never fell asleep out of the pram or in her sling! Always too busy looking at everything! We'd go to the garden centre/ tropical fish shop too and she was really interested in that. I so miss the days when she was so easily entertained without running off!

Sounds like you're doing lots of fun, stimulating things I would second visiting a garden centre: they're free and the baby will enjoy looking at the movement and colours of the plants and fish. I often park the pram up near some colorful flowers for my ds to look at! Another plus is that garden centres usually have a nice cafe so you can treat yourself to lunch/coffee!!

Thank you all for your advice. We do get out most days as otherwise I'd go a bit stir crazy I think! And funnily enough garden centres are our preferred choice precisely because I can grab a drink or sneaky lunch 😀
I just worried that perhaps I am preventing her from rolling etc by my own selfish need to get out the house (perhaps because a baby we know a day younger than mine has found her feet and is rolling - my daughter shows the odd bit of interest in her feet but that's it). Just a paranoid first time mum that I'm doing it all wrong.