Easy to read and full of practical development activities. Quite a lot of overlap with Baby Signs though.

My main problem with this book is that the title doesn't match up to the content. The title and description make it seem like the book is devoted to "Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love." In reality, it's a book on child development that just happens to include some games you can play to help enhance their development at each stage.

The book is broken up into informational chapters, with 1-2 pages of games listed at the end of each chapter. There's a list of all the games in the back of the book, which you might just want to flip to if that's what you're looking for.

Most of it is pretty simple and self explanatory, but there were some really good ideas for little games you can play, broken down by age (Birth-6 mo, 6+ mo, 12+ mo, 24+ mo, etc). All of those are recapped on the final 5 pages of the book. If I had it to do again, I would have skipped the book and read the last five pages.

Did you know that babies start learning in utero? This book will blow YOUR mind!

I learned a lot from this book. It goes into detail about the development of a baby's mind and why certain "games" are useful to play at certain ages. Very informative!

Great book for baby mind development assistance. Love suggestion of the games and activities to do with your baby. Would recommend this to parents of curious babies.

This book is similar to another book I read this year: What's Going On in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life.

Although I enjoyed What's Going on in There?, I *loved* Baby Minds because it focused more on what you can do to help your baby's brain grow. And not in a baby-flashcards sort of way, either. The games they suggest are fun and easy to incorporate into your routine. For example, they recommend modeling some pretend play starting at around 6 months to foster creativity. So we've instituted a 3:00 Puppet Show in our house. My 8-month-old daughter loves it of course, but so do I! 3:00 is about the time I start counting down the minutes til I get childcare help so it takes my mind off the clock for a bit.

I also preferred how this book summarized the relevant research studies in an accessible way. The research they highlighted made me that much more motivated to try the corresponding games. And this book was much lighter on the biological details of development, which I didn't mind at all considering those were the parts of What's Going on in There? I found myself skimming.

Both books had needed reminders to parents that there's no way to be a "perfect parent." The message in Baby Minds is: Just do what works for you, and don't stress out if you're not doing every single game they recommend because every single game won't work for everyone.

This book also has a handy list of all the games at the back, which I find myself using a lot lately. On the weekdays when I'm at home with my daughter all day, I use up all my tricks by the early afternoon--we read books, we take a walk, we have a tickle fest, I feed her solid food. Then I'm bored and she's bored, and that's not good. So the list at the back is helpful for jogging my memory about other things we can do together that will be fun for both of us. In fact, that's exactly how the 3:00 Puppet Show came into existence!

Love, Love, Love IT! I can't refer to this book enough. I'm always looking for new games and activities to engage my children in and this book is filled with them. I have tabs all through it and refer to it all the time (literally, almost every day) for ideas on what to play with my children.

One of my all-time favorite parenting/child development books. The authors summarize major child development research in a fun, easy to read, easy to understand manner. Then they offer practical suggestions for related games and activities for babies and toddlers that correspond to each developmental phase. This books is hands-on fun! It doesn't have the pretension of other baby brain development books that promise earlier reading and higher IQs. Instead, this book promotes strategies and activities that engage a child's natural interests and curiousities as they grow, giving them developmentally appropriate mental input and nourishment. I liked the fact that nearly all activities involve interaction with a parent or caregiver, which is, hands-down, the most important brain-booster of all!

This is a great introduction to development of children during their first two years. The authors strive to present research in an engaging manner and use the research as an explanation of why certain games are particularly fun and/or enriching for a child at a particular age. Although I enjoyed reading about the research, the meat of the book is the treatment of fun activities to do with children of different ages. A helpful summary at the back of the book reminds you (with page numbers) of the various activities and the ages at which children respond best/benefit most, grouped by cognitive area. The authors are a perhaps a little too enthusiastic of their own work on baby signs (they have a separate book on this). The overall tone avoids the worst of the gimmicks to make your baby a genius through an enriched environment but has a certain undertone of having fun while preparing your 2-week-old for Harvard.

The title is mis-leading in that there aren't actually games, but the book is helpful in describing a baby's mental development and how parents can foster that growth.

I was already familiar with most of the information in this bookbut it was concise and well organized. I would recommend it to other parents.