Newborn Activities: How Do You Play with a Newborn?

Last Updated on February 23, 2026 by Jordyn Koveleski Gorman

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POV: You’re fresh from the hospital, in awe of that perfect bundle of sweetness you just brought home. You’re also completely overwhelmed that now you have to care for this baby with virtually zero instructions.

Between navigating feedings, sleep, dirty diapers, and taking care of the rest of your home, playing with your newborn is probably somewhere at the bottom of the priority list. Take a breather, though, because playing with your newborn is a great opportunity to bond and build connections. Even as a newborn, play helps your baby learn about the world and how things work.

Doing activities with your newborn doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, newborn wake windows are so short that you may only have a few minutes, sometimes 5-10 minutes tops, to play with your little one. This can be a good thing as you ease into play.

The infant stage is such an important time in a child’s early brain development. So many new connections are forming within the brain every second. In fact, a young child’s brain is nearly twice as active as an adult’s brain (1).

The best newborn activities

The best newborn activities are simple and quick because their wake windows are so short in the beginning. Developmentally, it’s important to get baby on the floor as frequently as possible. Why?

The open floor is the only place we can safely put babies that gives them the freedom to move, explore their bodies, signal primitive reflexes, and begin naturally meeting motor milestones.

Play gym activities

Hang a variety of different toys from a play gym and place your baby under them on their back.  This is a great way to begin teaching cause and effect, focusing on objects, and eventually trying to reach for them. Pick toys that are large and easy to see, with high contrast colors.

Change up where your baby lies on the play mat to help them move their head in both directions, and use some rolled blankets to help prop them on their side.

From the day you bring baby home, you can start practicing sidelying with them. It’s as simple as it sounds, just that halfway position between being on their back or their tummy. If you’re just warming up to doing tummy time, this is a great position to try!

The sidelying play position is crucial to development for several reasons. It helps them bring their hands together without working against gravity, gives them a new perspective on the world, and helps develop coordinated eye movements. Sidelying also keeps pressure off the back of your baby’s head during those critical early months when the skull is soft. This means it naturally prevents babies from forming flat spots. Eventually, playing in this position will even help your little one start to roll! 

No matter the position your newborn lays in during these activities, they’ll benefit from a play gym for many months ahead.

Looking for a play gym your baby will love? My favorite play gym is from Lalo! You can use this link to save 10% on their website.

Tummy time for newborns

Work on tummy time in small increments with your newborn. We’re talking very short periods of time at first, gradually building up to a few continuous minutes. In the first few weeks of life, start by placing your baby on your chest. Then move them to the floor (right on the play mat) for tummy time activities.

Prop up a soft mirror in front of your baby so that they can look at themselves, or have a high-contrast book in their view for them to look at. Put motivating toys all around them to try and get baby to move.

These are our favorite toys for tummy time!

Newborn face time

Spending time face-to-face with your baby is the ultimate newborn activity. Everyone gets a little oxytocin boost! Try singing, talking, cooing, making faces, and describing things around you. When your baby coos, coo back to them. Pause and wait with an expectant face to see if they will continue the interaction. Congratulations, you’ve just had your first heart to heart with your little one!

Your face is more interesting to your newborn than any toy. When in doubt, look at your baby and interact!

Newborn sensory activities

It’s not quite time to break out a viral sensory bin for your newborn’s play time, but you can still help them explore their senses right now.

Side rocking: Place your baby on their back while on the floor. Bring their feet and hands to their belly button, so their arms and legs meet at their midline. While holding onto their hands and feet, gently rock them from side-to-side. As you rock them, wait for their head and neck to also turn to that side. This is a wonderful activity for pre-rolling bodies to practice movement! It also helps integrate some of baby’s primitive reflexes.

Bath time fun: Baths are inherently sensory activities! While you’re getting into this new bath routine, pick a few routine phrases to say every time you do a bath. And don’t forget to sing a fun song! Great words to model are “pour, wash, splash.” Songs like Rubber Ducky or I Had a Little Froggy are great for bathtime! As bath time gets longer and baby gets older, adding in some fun bath toys can make the experience even more enjoyable!

By providing rich sensory experiences, strength building opportunities, face-to-face time, and of course lots of snuggles, you will set your newborn up for success.

Books for newborns

Research has shown that early and consistent reading to infants helps improve early language skills. (2) The more you read to your baby, the better. The sky is the limit! Reading may look different than you expect during the newborn stage, and that’s okay. 

You can prop up black and white books for baby to study during tummy time or while side-lying. Placing your baby on your legs while sitting and reading face-to-face is another way to encourage eye contact, social smiles, and bonding with you!

Model one or two simple words at a time and remember to pause while reading to see if your baby will respond. Cooing comes in early, so they will likely vocalize back to you if you give them some time! There are tons of great books for newborns that encourage these skills.

When do newborns play with toys?

You might be wondering why you have a giant bucket of toys that your newborn couldn’t care less about. When will toys get interesting? The answer: it depends!

We expect to see developmental milestones such as batting at toys overhead by around the end of three months. Functional engagement with toys happens around six months. If you want to know when your baby will get hands-on and reach out for toys, the answer is soon. Just because they can’t do that yet, though, doesn’t mean toys are useless now!

For newborn activities, it’s best to use soft toys that have crinkle textures and teethers attached. This practices both tracking and focusing on objects. It also stimulates the senses with the different textures and helps your baby “organize” the mouth through early oral play. Toys with crinkle sounds help babies turn towards sound and locate objects.

Around 2 months of age, you can help guide the teether part of toys toward your baby’s mouth since they won’t be able to get it there on their own quite yet. Having early opportunities to explore safe textures within their mouth sets baby up for oral motor success down the road! For more on when babies start to play with toys, check out our blog.

Need more newborn activities?

The newborn haze is hard enough. You don’t also have to plan activities for the next few months (or years!). That’s where Eat Play Say comes in!

Even in these early days, you’re already building a solid play foundation for your child. There’s no need to complicate play just because they reach a new milestone or enter a new era, which will happen frequently for the next several months.

You’re the best parent for your baby, and you’re doing an amazing job. You’ve got this!

If you liked the activities in this post, you will love our Playbooks—more than 100 age-appropriate, developmentally supportive ways to play with your child using only what you have at home. Simplifying play from birth through toddlerhood? Yes please.

Sources

1. The Urban Child Institute (n.d.). Baby’s Brain Begins Now: Conception to Age 3. Retrieved April 16, 2024 from http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain
2. Adam M. Franks, Callie Seaman, Emily K. Franks, William Rollyson, Todd Davies. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine Dec 2022, 35 (6) 1156-1162; DOI: 10.3122/jabfm.2022.220064R2