Sienna is 11 months old now and she is becoming more active and aware of everything every day. With her wanting to explore more and get involved with everything that is going on, she needs more toys and activities that can capture her attention and keep her entertained for longer.
I have put together a list of things that we are using with sienna to help keep her happy and to build her skills and confidence.
Pop Up Ball Pit
The ball pit is definitely one of the things Sienna has the most fun with. She loves getting inside the ball pit and playing with all the balls. It definitely holds her attention for a long time and you can see she is having so much fun playing. She also loves throwing the balls out of it too. Playing catch with a baby who has an endless supply of balls to throw is definitely more fun for them than for us as you can imagine lol!
Drum Set
If you can stand the noise, a drum kit is a great sensory activity. Sienna can stay playing with the instruments for a long time. I’m actually quite surprised at how good she is with the wind instruments too. She blows them very, very well. I don’t remember Bella doing this at her age.
Soft/Indoor Balls
Oh my days, Sienna really loves to play with her ball. To be honest, I didn’t think of buying one for her just yet but when you have an older child in the house, their toys tend to be all around too and Sienna just decided she wanted to play with Bella’s ball. This particular ball is actually quite deflated now. But it is better that way because it is smaller and she can carry it everywhere. I was surprised to see her actually kicking the ball recently. I thought that was a big achievement for an 11-month-old baby! It definitely is a simple, but a great toy for all babies to learn a range of skills with as they play.
Zip Bag full of small toys
This is the easiest entertainment that you could have. Bella has a set of Peppa Pig toys, like all the kids this age it would seem, and she loves them. We keep these toys in a corner in the living room and of course, Sienna has discovered them too. She just goes straight to them and plays with them constantly.
Therefore, what I have done is to put all the pieces in a large transparent zip bag so she can go straight to it and empty it. This is the most fun ever for her. She can spend a fair amount of time exploring all the little toys. Of course, we have to watch out for any small pieces, take them out to avoid any choking.
Foldable box with small toys
Sienna has had this box of toys since she was 4 months old I think. These are small soft toys, some of which make noises. She used to empty the box all the time. Now though, she gets the box from the shelf and throws it everywhere. This seems to be entertaining for her as she tends to do this a lot!
Big foldable box with bigger soft toys
Although it was always in the living room, Sienna has only recently paid attention to this box. She didn’t use to play with it as much but I realised that lately she goes to the box and starts taking the soft toys out and gives them a hug and then takes a couple of them in turns to different parts of the house. I haven’t seen her doing this before so it is amazing and so lovely to watch. She is so cute.
Books
These books are for Bella although there are some that are more for Sienna’s age. But most of them are for older children. For some reason though, Sienna just loves them or, more accurately, she just loves making a mess with them, lol. She likes pulling them all from the shelf where they are kept onto the floor. I swear she does this about 10,000 times a day! Unfortunately, mummy here has to keep tidying them up every single time. You can see a picture of her doing this that I put in a post for Wicked Wednesday here.
Books with sounds
This type of book is always a winner because they really get Sienna’s attention. She now knows how to turn the page or at least she manipulates them in such a way that the music plays.
Pet toy with sound and movements
This toy is incredible. It moves in such a way that it looks like a real dog. It jumps, moves and begs, etc. It definitely captures Sienna’s attention! In the beginning, she was a little bit concerned about it but now she just plays with it a lot more. It is such a cute toy too and I really love it.
This is just a small example of what we use to keep Sienna entertained. It isn’t an exhaustive list, I am pretty sure there are so many more toys that can do this too but I hope this gives you some ideas on what toys are great for this age. I have put together a list of suggestions of toys that might be good entertainment for an 11 month old baby HERE.
What do you do to entertain your baby? What other toys have you used or what sort of activities have you done? It would be nice to make a list of everybody’s suggestions and tips so please leave your comment below as I would love to know what other tips you have.
Thanks for stopping by,
Love you all ❤️
Franca 💋
Lots of lovely useful ideas for entertaining
Haha with32 Nephews & Nieces and then 3 kids of my own i think i’ve covered most listed here and some like the drum set was never re-visited lol
Lovely ideas
great ideas here , my youngest grandson loves any toys that play sounds or music at the moment
I don’t have children yet, but my niece and nephew love books and anything that makes a noise! I am very impressed at how tidy and neat all your toys look! My nephew is a little dark destroyer!
Having teenagers, I had forgotten how challenging this can be
Ball pool is the best! My girls loved having ball pools when they were this age. I remember the balls going everywhere! Like absolutely everywhere. My eldest second word she learnt was ‘throw’ because of throwing balls in a ball pit.
Lots of lovely ideas here! My children are all grown up but I do have nieces and nephews of age.
the pop up ball pit looks great