Baby's First Bungee Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rattle

Infant rattles are small toys with bells, beans, pebbles, or even sand inside. Baby curls fingers around the handle and can track with eyes and ears while learning to produce the noise with the hand. Native Americans made rattles out of rawhide, Paul Revere designed them in silver, and Tiffany & Co. made sterling-silver rattles. Rattles are also part of Greek mythology. Often made of cloth, wood or plastic, taking the shapes of birds, animals or shells, rattles teach baby eye-hand coordination, and stimulate the brain. Adults like rattles too--they are said to be the only instrument found in every society across the world. Rattles make great music, and many societies believe they create a link between humans and the divine.

Answer: Mobile

Mobiles as entertainment for babies were inspired when sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976) altered his sculptures in the 1930s to add moving parts. Mobiles are a moving collection of shapes like flowers, clouds or sailboats that dangle over an infant's sleeping space.

Some of them create music as they move. They are made of everything from wood to crystal, and you can even design your own. The floating shapes entertain and pique interest in an infant, as well as soothe and lull them to sleep. They may also stimulate vision, and some studies indicate infants respond best to black and white. Whatever the color or shapes, be sure your baby cannot reach the mobile. Once a child can stand in the (cot) crib (about 8-12 months), take the mobile down.

Answer: Doll

Dolls are small figures that resemble human beings, often with a changeable ward robe. Modern dolls can walk, talk, eat and even swim, but a deeply cherished doll may do nothing at all but lay with baby while s/he sleeps, and make no protests when baby pulls arms, tugs hair and jabs fingers in the eyes. Babies love human faces--it's apparently programmed into our DNA. Studies have shown that babies delight in even a cardboard image of a human face, so long as it has eyes and a mouth. Dolls are found around the world and throughout history, made of rags, wood, wax, yarn, roots, porcelain and even solid gold. Choosing clothes and dressing dolls, male and female, may teach children cultural norms.

Answer: Peek-a-boo

The baby game of "Peek-a-boo" involves briefly disappearing or hiding your face from an infant, then popping back into view and saying "Peek-a-boo!" or "I see you!". This never fails to greatly amuse an infant or toddler. Until at least 8 months old infants have developed little "object permanence"--the knowledge that when objects or people cannot be felt or seen, they still exist.

The game of Peek-a-boo may assist this learning, though a Beluga whale filmed playing Peek-a-boo with two giggling children at a Connecticut aquarium (2014) shows that Peek-a-boo is also just plain fun.

Answer: Finger puppet

Newborns can very much enjoy simple finger puppets. For their first few months babies see only 8-10 inches (20-25 cm) away, so using a simple bit of fabric or construction paper made into a cylinder and fitted over an adult finger, parents can interact with their newborn by making a finger puppet "talk", tell stories and move around, while baby snuggles close.

As babies grow they love "sock" puppets, hand or arm puppets, and "ticklebugs" which have four legs. The ancient Greeks, Eastern Indians, Japanese and Africans all made and enjoyed a wide range of often sophisticated puppets. "The Muppets" TV characters created by The Jim Henson Company, are known as "full-body puppets".

These have full and human-like independent movement and speech, though many are animals.

Answer: Web sites

There are an increasing number of online learning web sites offering pictorial games and toys for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Most of the Internet sites offer their games on mobile devices as well as computers. Whether learning online speeds or enhances the growth and fun experienced by babies has yet to be determined, but it certainly gives them an early comfort with the technology. Fisher-Price, an international leader in infant and preschooler toys founded in 1930, was perhaps first to advertise their website as a "baby university". "Toys R Us" is a popular children's toy store, the UK's University of Cambridge is among the most prestigious universities in the world, and Twitter is an online social networking service.

Answer: False

While research shows that limited hours of television can educate older children, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others issued statement urging parents not to allow children under two to watch TV. Multiple studies on early brain development showed that babies and toddlers miss out on essential interaction with real human beings, necessary for "the development of appropriate social, emotional and cognitive skills". For a reason not understood, infants and toddlers do not learn vocabulary from television, though older children do.

Answer: Stacking

Made of anything that will stack, like shoe boxes, plastic cups, wooden blocks, foam or clay, baby creates a pile, engaging gross-motor skills, or practices hand-eye coordination and problem solving by putting different sized rubber rings on a small post. Baby is too young to place in order of size or color, though handling items of different size and shape is fun. For babies, the challenge and the pleasure is simply making a pile, then knocking it down! Stacking rings, then dumping them off! Later a child's favorite toys might include Lego and Lincoln Logs--simply more sophisticated stacking.

Answer: Song

The human voice is one of baby's strongest comforts and delights. By three weeks old babies gurgle and smile in response to singing games. A powerful emotional connection and learning tool, babies are comforted, learn language, and can identify body parts in time to song. Babies really soak up lyrics that include the child's name, spell out the name, and mention a favorite toy or person. Babies also adore alliterative sounds--several words that start with the same sound. Toddlers can learn to "dance", clap and bounce to song lyrics. You don't have to be Barry Manilow, who sang "I Write the Songs", but after all that play, you may want to sing baby to sleep.

Answer: Bungee (bungy) jumping

Though playing "airplane" where dad swings baby high into the air can never lose its joy, many babies who are not yet masters of walking love to "bungee" (bungy) jump. If squeals of delight are any measure, babies thrill to springing up and down in the air, strapped into a safety harnesses and suspended by elastic cords in a doorway, or higher still between two poles available at local malls. Amazingly infants and toddlers have taken to zip lining, trampoline jumping, and even a baby version of rock climbing. Careful though, even experienced adults have sustained injury and death at this game.