How to Maximize the Play Value of Infant Mobiles
and Which One Gives the Best Value ?

Infant mobiles, a colorful fascinating toy to hang over your baby's changing table, over the crib and over the car seat, are often regarded as a must-have infant toy.

There is a lot of variation in these infant toys sold in the market nowadays. Some just swing in the breeze, while others have motors for continuous swing. Some are attached to the crib, some are attached to the wall. Today, most of them have music boxes attached to it.

But all of them offer benefits for your newborn. Some, which are better designed, provides more benefits than the others.

But what are the benefits of having a good quality baby mobile and how to maximize the play value of your baby mobiles. And more importantly, what is the infant mobile which gives you the best value for your bucks ?

(Scroll down to read the benefits of infant mobiles and tips on how to maximize the benefits. If you want to go straight to our best infant mobile recommendation, click here.

The obvious benefit of baby mobiles is for infant visual stimulation.

Research has found that infant which have lots of things to look at make a lot of neuronal connection in the brain which is important for brain development.

So what should an infant look at ?

There has been some reports suggesting that newborn babies are best stimulated by black and white or contrasting colors. In addition, bright red in the middle of black and white colors is also good for newborn sight stimulation. When the baby is older, perhaps around 2 months old, those black, white and red colors can be replaced by bright colors. Bold colors such as bright blue, yellow, red and green are the best. Therefore, in order for a baby mobile to be educational, it has to have black and white as well as bright colors for the baby to look at. In addition, newborn babies focus best when an object is placed at 12 inch distance. Therefore when hanging an infant mobile, it is best to stay at that distance to give the baby a maximal visual stimulation.

Using infant mobiles for sound or hearing stimulation.

Baby crib mobiles can be used to stimulate hearing and soothe the baby as long as it has a music box attached to it. When choosing a baby mobile, it is important to determine whether you would want to use the baby mobile to soothe or stimulate the baby. Infant mobiles with loud and fun song are obviously not suitable for sending the baby to sleep and are best used for play times. In contrast, lullaby song is best used to soothe the baby. Recent finding has also found that classical music can both provide sound stimulation and increase the baby's cognitive development. Therefore, you may want to get a musical mobile which plays classical music.

Other benefits of infant mobiles.
Other benefits of baby crib mobiles include:

• excite the baby and enhance development of motor skills.
  Babies will be excited by looking at the fun attachments, and the older one may even try to reach/kick the pieces.
  
  
• help the babies to develop receptive language (language understanding capability).
  The caregivers can touch or point to the attachment one by one and talk about each one of them. This will give a good introduction to language.

Now that you know that the best infant mobiles have plethora of benefits, you may want to find out how to baby crib mobiles. This baby crib mobile article shows you how.

Musical Mobile: Sweet Island Dream by Tiny Love

This newborn mobile is our first choice and is the baby crib mobile we recommend to get for your baby. We like it because it provides maximum stimulation to your baby and is developmental.

It has enough attachments in bright color for your baby to look at and therefore get visual stimulation. In addition, the attachments are actually hung horizontally, so your baby gets to look at them properly (not just the bottom part of the attachments). I find that some of the baby mobiles have the attachments hung vertically, so that all the infant can see is just the bottom of the attachments.

There is also music to stimulate the hearing and differential movement of attachment for developing eye tracking ability - all powered by batteries. This mobile will surely entertain your baby and at the same time, stimulate him.

The newborn mobile is available at Genius Babies, a toy store specializing in educational baby toys. The store carries Sweet Island Dream mobile and other high quality baby mobiles as well as a unique variety of newborn or infant visual stimulation toys/books/package not available elsewhere. You can also get it from here

Infant-Stim Baby Mobile by Manhattan Toys.

This is a cheaper and more basic baby mobile which does a good job in stimulating your baby. It does not have all the fancy bell and whistles, and not operated by batteries, but is superior for infant visual stimulation.

The baby mobile has a set of visual stimulation cards which are supposed to be hung according to the age of your baby. For instance, when your baby is still a newborn, you can hang the black and white cards, and then change the them to primary color and face cards as the baby gets older.

This newborn mobile is available at (b>Genius Babies, a toy store specializing in educational baby toys. The store carries Infant Stim mobile and other high quality baby mobiles as well as a unique variety of newborn or infant visual stimulation toys/books/package not available elsewhere.

If you only want to buy the mobile, this store 'sometimes' has a cheaper Infant Stim-Mobile.

Musical Mobile (Battery-Operated) by Tiny Love

Infant-Stim Baby Mobile from Manhattan Toys

*** NOTE: Do you want to keep up-to-date with children's toys-related issues ? Then subscribe to our FREE monthly newsletter 'Play, Learn and Grow' and receive a FREE bonus ebook on 'Toy Shopping Guide'.
Click here to subscribe to our newsletter and claim the 'Toy Shopping Guide' for free.

Buying Guide for Baby Crib Mobiles

Back to Baby Mobile Main Page

Links to other educational baby toys articles:

Guide to the Best Developmental Infant Toys for Babies 0-6 months

Guide to Baby Developmental Toys for Infant 6-12 months

Baby Educational Toys

From Infant Mobiles page to Homepage