At 11 months old, your baby is mastering those new motor skills they were beginning to accomplish at 10 months. The creepers are now crawling, the crawlers are now speeding up and the few early walkers are getting the gist of it. Their language development is maturing and they are beginning to show they understand more of what you say to them!
Exploring new possibilities
The creepers and crawlers are now cruising further along furniture and beginning to sit back down without your help. This means they’re very active with standing, sitting, pulling up to stand again, and so on, building up their leg and core strength needed for balance when walking without assistance in the months ahead. Try out this play set up to encourage your baby to stand, squat or sit and stand up again. If your baby is eager to walk, check out this video for some great ideas!
With this new strength, climbing and crawling onto low furniture or stairs will become an appealing new challenge: now they want to see how far they can go without your help! They are loving the newfound independence of mobility and are eager to explore every corner and surface of your home. Make sure you secure dressers and any other furniture to the walls because apart from climbing, they are beginning to explore how drawers open and close when they pull and push them. This is just one way they are beginning to explore with cause & effect. You may notice them crawl towards a block tower to knock it down, start and stop a toy, roll balls or move a car back and forth on the floor. Try this activity to work on these new fine motor skills while working on language and vocabulary.
At 10 months, your baby began to show off their fine motor skill of pincers grasp, and now they are able to drop, throw and hurl objects! Before, if something was released, it was accidental. Now, your baby will begin to purposefully release and throw objects, another way of exploring cause & effect! Maybe they’ll want to practice this skill while playing with spaghetti!
Words have meaning
Their cognitive and language skills are rapidly developing too. They are expressing their wants and needs through gestures like pointing towards somewhere they want to go, an object they want, or even pointing out an object they want you to notice too! If this isn’t exciting enough, at 11 months your baby is beginning to associate objects with words. Looking at books with familiar objects will become increasingly interesting for them now and they’ll pay attention to the words, just as when you take them out for groceries or a walk, they’ll turn to look at the objects you are mentioning. They won’t be repeating them just yet, but they are interiorizing them for when it’s time to talk!
Another word they may now understand is ‘no’. You may notice if they are about to put something they shouldn’t into their mouth and you blurt out a ‘no!’, they’ll stop to look at you (and possibly stop what they were doing). If your baby hasn’t said their first word yet, don’t worry, they probably recognize the words already and might say them soon. Some common first words are ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘papa’, ‘ball’, ‘no’, ‘bye’, ‘uh-oh’, ‘dog’, ‘banana’ which sounds more like ‘nana’, and ‘milk’. A great way to practice the words is reading books with your baby and looking clear images and saying the words out loud, as explained in this activity.
11 Month Milestones List:
- Goes from standing to sitting without your help
- Explores how high or far they can crawl or climb furniture
- Starts and stops a toy’s movement (like a toy car)
- Uses the handle to open and close a door or drawer
- Knocks down block towers
- Moves toys that have wheels
- Turns towards familiar objects or people when they are named
- Understands the meaning of “no”
- Says “mama”, “dada”, or “papa” when referring to parents
- Points to an object they want
- Points to things they want you to look at
- Is shy or anxious with strangers
- Dances to a song’s beat
Play activities from our catalog to help your baby master their new skills:
Development tip: push toy alternatives
Development tip: traction for crawling
Sensory play: Colorful Spaghetti
