My husband took the lead on this idea for DIY high contrast cards for baby! He made these DIY high contrast cards for babies that are great for visual stimulation. These are too easy. Two supplies needed-that is it!
Supplies:
DIY High Contrast Cards for Babies
Using index cards, draw on designs using a black marker.
Start with straight bars for the newborn and increase the complexity for your infant as they grow.
You can even collect cards that will work like DIY high contrast cards for baby like the one in the middle of the picture below. That was in a free baby gift from a baby products company. It is a simple design that you can DIY!
For the contrast cards we made my husband used simple designs to keep everything very high contrast for baby’s visual stimulation. He did straight bars, then made one with zig zags, and then some solid black shapes.
My oldest son, no kidding, would stare at these contrast cards for babies while sitting in his bouncer from about birth until 3 months. Here is a pic I took right out of his baby scrapbook! Would you believe he has now graduated high school and has an amazing eye for engineering and construction? I won’t say that these high contrast cards are the reason (LOL!) but they certainly did not hurt. 😉
Stationary visual stimulation like this is better for baby than screen-based stimulation of tablet for phone. It allows the eyes and brain to steadily focus on an image. It calms rather than causes erratic changes to the focus. I think over stimulating baby with screens and rapidly changing images causes attention deficit. We prefer steady focus objects and no handheld screens before preschool age. Read more about what is important for infant development here.
He would move his hands and arms in such an excited way when we put new cards up. I knew it was stimulating his attention. He has a great focus when he is interested in a topic now as a school age kid. Simple activities work!
After a few months you can add colors like red or blue to vary the interest. My husband got a little carried away and added in some infant world history. LOL!
Talk to your child about what they are looking at to increase the learning. You can even place these index cards in zip top bags and make the book I shared in this DIY books for infants post.
I have free printable contrast cards in a jack o’lantern theme available for download here.
The best baby mobile with this visual stimulation design is the Manhattan Toy Infant Stimulation mobile. We loved using it with our second child.
There are two sizes:
Have you noticed your baby being entertained by high contrast visual stimulation?
It is awesome to see that brain working in this way and their attention span developing! Encourage it with these DIY contrast cards for babies and our other simple DIY activities for babies.
Did you try making these ? What did you think?
This is a really good idea… thanks for sharing 🙂