re you looking for the best activity gym that can suit your lovely baby? An activity gym is also called an exercise room but here we are talking about the child’s playing center. Choosing the best activity gym for your kid is not an easy affair because there are thousands of them available on the market and they vary in make and functionality. You need to consider various factors about the gym before making that decision because it will definitely make a lot of positive impact on his developmental needs. The features and specifications will help you in knowing how to pick the best baby activity gym for your baby’s development and purchase it.
As a caring parent, this article will provide you with reliable information about various babies’ activity gyms and the types of toys and gears that come with them. You will also know what to do to improve the visual quality of the gym and if such items can aid your baby’s growth and development positively or not. That is, such items should be impactful to the child and not just keep him busy. Most persons like a gymnasium with lots of toys and baby gears in order to keep the child very active throughout the day. You need to also ensure that your chosen gym has good child developmental benefits such as improvement of cognitive skills like gripping and grappling of objects, self-awareness, optical sensitivity, and gross motor advantages for your child.
Here are some features to consider while considering the best baby activity gym to provide for the child that will be suitable for enhancing his physiological and mental development.
6 Types of Baby’s Activity Gyms You can Buy for Your Child
Variety is the spice of life. Here are different activity gyms that you can purchase for your kid. All you have to do is considering their various specifications and reliability in meeting your child’s developmental needs as we discussed earlier.
1. Fisher-Price Kick and Play Piano Gym
Do you know that your baby can sit and play or lay and play the piano? This great gym offers the kid a piano that he can strike with his little fingers and it will produce amazing and lovely sounds. He will enjoy the music playing for about fifteen minutes. This baby’s leisure center contains some toys like elephant clackers, roller frog, and hippo teether.
2. Leka Gym
This activity gym is strong and safe for babies to play on them but suitable for kids from 0 to 18 months old. There are good toys that can stimulate the kid for better coordination of the hands, eyes, and even legs. However, you must not use this item in a crib due to the risks involved.
3. Skip Hop Explore-and-More Amazing Arch Activity Gym
Your baby is yet to have fun if he had not used a beautiful leisure center like this one, where he can sit up, lay on his back, and play tummy time. The child can adapt to two arch positions in this gym such as overhead position and seated position while playing with toys like hanging hedgehog, dancing fox, musical teether, and a pull-string peekaboo owl that hoots. Moreover, you will find other fantastic activities that will fit your child’s developmental needs in this sports center.
4. Tiny Love Move and Play Playmat
Are you looking for a gym that basically suits your child’s developmental needs and is relevant to him as he grows older? This is a versatile sports hall for the child with multiple positioning styles to suit your baby’s needs. There is a large mat, automated lights, seven toys, and it can produce about seven musical tunes too.
5. Haba Color Fun Play Gym
Haba Color Fun Play Gym has enough spaces for you to hang some other simple
toys if that is necessary. The height is adjustable accordingly. You will find colored wooden disks hitting one another and producing some pleasant sounds and a little frog attached to the discovery bar for more fun for the child.
6. DIY Wooden Activity Gym
Do you know that you can make a baby’s gym by yourself? The materials you need are eyehooks, chains, 1 × 2 × 8 feet pine board, round wooden ball, S-hooks, a miter saw, and ¾-inch dowel. This is a fun do-it-yourself program regarded as EAK house that is Emily Anne Keller’s house.
You will begin by providing a suitable footing for the structure. Firstly, cut the 1 × 2 into four parts, from the top of the board join two pieces together; make a ¾ hole in each board with the drill and even a hole on each of the wooden balls too. Fix the dowel through the holes and attach the wooden balls at the end using glue to make it stronger. You can couple the legs at the same point with the eyehooks provided and fix the chain and s-hook. Check the structure now. Congrats! You have your wooden baby’s gym, simple and easy to build.
5 Features to Consider when Choosing the Best Baby Activity Gym
1. The Gym Should Have Strategic Points to Place Toys
Do you know the reason why this feature is very important in a baby’s activity gym? It is really a relevant factor because it will improve and enhance one of the greatest developmental needs of your child and that is movement. Your child craves for the capability to move from one place to another. Placing toys in strategic positions on the gym will motivate him to move his head, hands, legs, and even the entire body in an attempt to touch or pick up such gears. Therefore, ensure that the gym has various points where you can hang these toys making it easier for the child to always, stretch himself in order to play with them.
In addition, do not attempt to place items like pillows, chairs, and baby positioners in the baby’s sports center because it will make mobility difficult for the child.
2. The Baby’s Activity Gymnasium Should has Clean and Simple Toys or Pictures
The child’s exercise room needs to have clean and simple toys or pictures attached to them. These items should be really, suitable to promote the development of your baby’s eyes. Literally, after birth within the first few weeks, the baby’s eyes usually see objects and figures very dimly. Therefore, you should place regular shapes for him to play with or simple black and white cards are ideal to keep him busy and active.
3. Purchase a Sports Center with Detachable Units
Do you want to improve your kid’s motor learning and development? If you purchase a gym with detachable parts, it can help to impart some skills like belly to back rolling or back to belly rolling, which is regarded as motor learning and development. This activity is pleasurable to the infants as it enhances their mobility like rolling and improves their playtime with adults. However, the activity gym should be easily separable from the blanket or mat to boost the child’s activity and a face-to-face contact with the parents and caregivers.
4. The Toys and Baby Gears Should be Easily Changeable in the Gym
Changing the toys and other devices in your baby’s exercise center is very important because, with time, he will begin to grip and play with them. You should always remove and replace the toys in the activity gym in order to get him
acquainted with various objects that he needs to know. Moreover, this approach will help to improve his mental prowess and developmental strides as he becomes familiar with different devices in the gym.
As time progresses, you will be cutting down on the number of gears you are placing in the gym in order to help him concentrate more with few handy and useful toys.
5. Mobile Toys and Devices with Lights on Them Should not be Used in the Gym
Placing mobile toys or devices with lights on them in the baby’s activity gym should be discouraged because they cause unnecessary attention and distract the child from other useful gears. With this approach, the child may not be used to other head positions, which are ideal for his proper growth and development because he will be forced to concentrate only in a direction. This is not commendable, especially if such objects are placed right above his face making him keep the head in one position. Not only will this posture flatten the back part of the head but also it will affect his developmental processes because he may not be able to recognize other items around him easily.
Which of These Baby’s Activity Gyms will You Pick for Your Child?
Baby’s activity gyms were developed to spice up the life of a child from cradle teaching him or her some cognitive skills like grasping, touching, optical sensitivity, physical stimulation, gross motor skills, and self-awareness, among others. Their features and specifications are points of consideration whenever you are making a buying decision for such products because their usage will influence the child’s developmental stages in life. Furthermore, you should check the durability and reliability of the products before buying to avoid accidents and fatalities but if you know that these devices cannot meet the developmental needs of your baby, then, do it yourself.
