Activities on Listening Skills for Infants

• Practicing listening skills allow parents to spend time with their infant. Mimi Haddon/Lifesize/Getty Images

  Over the first year of a baby's life, her senses are still developing. Auditory skills are developing quickly and just a couple months after birth, babies can begin to develop their listening skills. By the end of the first year, babies can respond to your voice and begin to use the information that they have stored from listening to begin babbling and saying a few words themselves. There are activities that you can do to help your infant develop his listening skills along the way.

Read to Your Infant

• Reading to your infant from early on is a good way to promote listening skills. Instead of reading a different book every time, read the same book over and over. Repetition helps your infant recognize sounds and phrases that are familiar. Listening to stories together is also an activity that helps build listening skills. You can take your little one to a library or local bookstore when it has professional storytellers performing. You can also purchase audio books for listening in the car or at home.

Talk to Your Infant

• Talk to your infant as much as possible by narrating daily activities such as her bath, changing and feeding or your daily chores. If you are cooking, describe what you are cooking, where you got the recipe or a funny story about cooking with your mother. Baby Center recommends talking to infants throughout the day. You can tell them an interesting story you heard on the radio or about your day at work. They may not understand completely what you are saying or respond yet, but they are listening and storing away information for later use. Keep in mind that babies will mimic things that they have heard when they begin talking more, so be careful of your language.

Sing to Your Infant

• Singing to your infant is a good way to help him develop his listening skills. For young infants, being sung to can be soothing but as your baby gets to two to four months old, he will be able to recognize repetitive sounds and words. Try singing a song that repeats often. Baby Center recommends "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" because the words are simple and repetitive. You can also switch out some words and add in your baby's name or the names of other objects to help with your child's vocabulary as well.