She may not be able to walk, talk, crawl, or write yet, but it’s never too early to start the learning process! Being a stay-at-home parent at this stage, I can only do so much with Avery. We go on walks, runs, I read and show her pictures, but she still needs her motor and speech skills to develop. Despite this minor obstacle, I take every opportunity I can to teach new things to Avery.

While putting inserts in her cloth diapers, I’ll tell her the color of the diaper I’m currently stuffing. If we have more than one of the same color, I’ll tell her it’s 1 of 3 or however many we have. Same for when changing, I tell her the color of her new diaper and try to relate it to a season, holiday, or certain feeling.  For example, bright yellow is reminiscent of Spring, a popular color for Easter, and symbolizes happiness.

If she grabs the hair on my right arm, I let her know that’s my right arm. When she sneezes 3 times in a row, I tell her that was 3 sneezes. If she starts crying, I’ll count the time until she stops. “That’s 2 hours you’ve been crying while I sat here!” Okay, that last one is a joke, I would never do that!

So, after her morning nap the other day, I had a load of laundry to do and started gathering everything to wash. As I scavenged around the house for any last minute items, I kept finding breast pads scattered around, so I figured I could make learning game out of it!

I explained to Avery that we needed to go around the house and count how many of mommy’s breast pads we can find.  She just gave me a “What the crap are you talking about, dad?” pity smile, and we started our breast pad scavenger hunt.

We began in our bedroom and found 2 there…

 

Then we headed to the living room and found 2 more. No, wait, there’s another one stuck in the couch. Good job Avery! That’s 3 in the living room and 5 total so far.

 

Maybe the animals know where some are hiding. Hi Abby and Lou, do you know where Kelley left any breast pads lying around?

 

Guess not, on we go. The guest room had plenty of cloth diaper inserts, but no breast pads.

 

The last places to look were the kitchen and Avery’s nursery. There was one in the kitchen, and, oh, look, 3 more in the nursery!

 

So, today we counted 8 breast pads across our house.

 

She may not fully understand, but things like this really do help to build her brain. Sure, it’s funny (to me at least), but I also feel good knowing it’s helping to expand our little girl’s knowledge.

Plus, I think she looks smarter as a result. What do you think?

Do you have any “fun” games you like to play or did play with your babies?

How do you feel about trying to teach a baby things at an early age? Beneficial or not worth it?