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1. Achieving independent sitting
Once your child can maintain sitting without support you can start progressing their strength and confidence in sitting. To begin with, when doing this activity, your child should still be surrounded by cushions or have you close in case of falling but as their strength and confidence grows they will no longer need that.
Children need to be able to reach out of their base of support and return. You can encourage this by using toys and other objects or interest to give your child an incentive to reach. Start by encouraging forward leaning as this is the easiest to achieve, once they have got the hang of this you can encourage reaching to the side and finally rotating to reach behind. You can change the difficulty of this task by having objects close to begin with so they do not have to lean very much or further away so they have to lean quite a lot.
Some children may be reticent to rotate and reach. Encourage lots of head turning to look at objects to the side and a little behind to begin with and this can progress to turning to take something or press something.
Once your child is able to do some reaching out of their base and returning to centre then another activity you can do to improve postural control is balance reactions on your lap.
Do this by holding your child around the hips and rocking them side to side or forward and back. You can make this fun incorporating songs such as 'Rock rock rock the boat' or 'Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on the plate'. Start by doing slow, small movements and gradually increase speed and amount of leaning.
2. Getting ready to crawl
Tummy time, tummy time, tummy time! 
It is still so important for your child to spend time on their tummy. This is how they develop strength in their back and neck as well as stability and control at their shoulders. Encourage your child to push up so their elbows are straight, you can prompt this with little prods just under their shoulders on their front.
Once your child is confidently pushing up on straight arms, you can start to assist them into a crawling position so they are on hands and knees. Give support on either side of their lower tummy. Giving your child time on hands and knees will help develop hip stabilility. You can help support their legs into position by placing your knees either side of theirs, as shown in this picture.
As they become more comfortable in this position you can start to encourage them to reach for objects. Support them in doing this to begin with so they feel a sense of achievement; gradually reduce your support as they gain strength to support themselves on one arm.
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