Little learners
As you and your baby grow more confident with food, you can have lots of fun trying all sorts of scrummy shapes, textures and tastes. Exploring, playing and getting hands on helps encourage your little learners’ sense of adventure and a love of good food!
Start with these weaning funhacks - p.s try not to wait too long to start getting adventurous as it will help keep those tiny taste buds interested.
- Take it slow: introduce new textures gradually, it helps your baby develop the mouth control they need for trickier foods!
- Learn to chew: pop some food on the corner of your little learners’ mouth, this will help them learn how to move their tongue and explore.
- Experiment: babies often enjoy bitter and sour tastes - try lemon, kiwi, oranges, pepper or spinach and have a giggle at their expression! These are often trickier tastes so make sure to introduce them early on in your food adventure.
- Hot and cold: try different temperatures with your little one, let them feel with their fingers first so they become more used to new sensations.
- Grip & grab: give your little one different food shapes to play with, try pasta tubes, cubes of cheese, or zesty orange segments.
- Squish & squash: a juicy piece of mango squished between little fingers might be challenging for your baby to pick up, but it’s a new texture to try.
- Change of scene: if food refusal is an issue, don’t just feed in the highchair at home, try when you’re out and about in the garden or on a bench in the park.
- Get social: mealtimes are for sharing so pull your baby’s highchair up to the table, make dates with mummy friends and their babies so they can join in the fun too!
- Join in: babies learn from watching others, so get dipping and munching encouraging them to copy you