All Etta Loves goodies are ultra-soft, made from organic cotton, and leave babies mesmerised by the sensory magic. The set of three Sky Print Muslins (£28) and Sensory Hanging Squares (£22) certainly live up to this.
All products are available from Etta Loves.
Either of these make a xx present for a new baby or a baby shower gift.
Etta Loves has also produced an animated video for babies in conjunction with the wonderful bunch at Gusto and their good friends at The Sussex Baby Lab.
And here is what Ella Loves says about their research.
"We have always been driven to find out as much as possible about baby vision, as by understanding what babies see month by month and how they learn to see we are able to provide optimised visual experiences for them on everyday baby essentials like our muslins, blankets and playmats and now in this very special animation. This approach is what makes our sensory video very different from the myriad of sensory animations aimed at infants.
"We work with experts in babies' visual and cognitive development Not only are all our designs created in conjunction with our consultant Orthoptist (expert in children's vision) but our animation has been tested with babies at The University of Sussex Baby Lab. Professor Anna Franklin who oversaw the experiment notes: 'When we recorded the eye-movements of babies looking at the animation we could see that Etta Loves have got it just right for babies’ visual ability and that babies fully scan the animation, track the motion and new events, and even learn to predict things that are happening.'
"Every element has been carefully considered and linked to what we know about infant vision and preference. Babies prefer natural movements to mechanical ones, and they learn from their environment. All the animations in the video are drawn from real life and the colour pallet used is based on the latest research around a babies' visual development in their first year.
"We know that as humans we are wired to find nature very calming – so we've rooted the sensory animations in natural scenes and objects, to ensure that both parent and child would find it soothing and not over-stimulating. We used the latest research to determine the speed of animation – the movement in the video is deliberate and ensures that your babies is able to track the images thus aiding their cognitive and visual development The sound effects match the animation.
"Sound plays an important part in the development of young children. The sound effects used in the video are purposely selected to enhance the experience of learning through looking, as well as deepening those connections to the natural world. It goes without saying that screen time should never replace face-to-face interaction with your baby, but the reality is that many parents and carers do need a moments distraction for their little one from time to time, and if they don’t have one of our physical products to hand to help, we wanted a perfectly optimised visual experience to be available online too. And we intentionally only made our animation last 12 minutes, as not only do most infants under 1 year old not have a long attention span, but we don't want to encourage long periods of screen time."
You can watch the video here.