Piaget's Six Substages of Sensorimotor Development

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For my Life - Span Development class we have an assignment that incluides the Piaget's 6 substages of sensorimotor development. With this assignment we are supposed to find a toy for each substage, and answer the following questions:

Why is the toy appropriate?

How it will enhance the substage?

How it builds schemes?How it will enhance language development, deferred imitation, explicit memory, and implicit memory?

How will the toy enhance object premenece?

The problem is that I don't know what a infant in the 1st Stage, Simple reflexes, would play with. Most babies I know between birth and 3 mos. sleep, eat, and poop. If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

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Specializes in OB/peds (after gen surgery for 3 yrs).

From Wikipedia: "The first sub-stage occurs from birth to six weeks and is associated primarily with the development of reflexes. Three primary reflexes are described by Piaget: sucking of objects in the mouth, following moving or interesting objects with the eyes, and closing of the hand when an object makes contact with the palm (palmar grasp). Over these first six weeks of life, these reflexes begin to become voluntary actions; for example, the palmar reflex becomes intentional grasping. (Gruber and Vaneche, 1977)."

Sooooooooooo......the toys could be ..............things to suck on (that are appropriate....a pacifier.........things to watch............a mobile, some of those new crib toys............and things to grasp.........often a pacifier (LOL), or a soft rattle type toy, or even one of those new taggie blankets. How does that sound? Also, the best "toy" at this time is mom....something interesting to look at, something to touch and grasp fingers and the ability to suck on.... That sounds funny, but I'm not using the right words....clean it up a little and you'll have a great answer.

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Thank you so much for your help! It is greatly appreciated!

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Color would also be a factor for an infant this young. They need toys that are bright/dark, like a black and white mobile. Also, a wrist rattle would be my other suggestion, it goes on their wrist like a watch and every time they shake their hand it makes a noise.

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Color would also be a factor for an infant this young. They need toys that are bright/dark, like a black and white mobile. Also, a wrist rattle would be my other suggestion, it goes on their wrist like a watch and every time they shake their hand it makes a noise.

Thanks for the idea!

I think that I may have been thinking too deeply into it.......I tend to do that way too often!

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