Enhancing Child Development: How Motor Skills Develop With Toys
Children’s initial years are filled with curious explorations of self and surroundings. They also absorb knowledge and capture loads of love and affection from the people around them.
Their inquisitiveness fosters their growth and development. This is because children are born with around 100 billion cells, which require active outer interactions and stimuli for healthy brain connection and development.
Therefore, the kids need to navigate their inner natural curiosity by interacting with their environment. Toys form an important part of that developmental phase in children.
The Significance Of Motor Skill Development In Early Childhood
Motor skill development is intricately linked to the overall development of children. This is because it begins with fine motor skill development with toys.
The reason is, that even lifting a toy requires tiny movements that demand efficient hand-eye coordination, visual stimulation, spatial awareness, problem-solving, cognitive thinking, and social and communication skills.
With time, these tiny skills polish into much finer skills, like gross motor skills with complex toys, decision-making, leadership, sportsmanship, optimism, and complex problem-solving skills.
Hence, motor skill development indeed covers the foundational life course for the children’s survival!
Wondering how? Let’s understand.
How Toys Serve As Tools For Enhancing Motor Skills
Consider a baby who is just trying to grab a stacking ring. How do you think he could coordinate to pick it up?
It happens due to the mixed coordinational functioning of the brain, eye, and muscles, working as fine motor skills!
Since children are born curious souls, they naturally try to grab objects in their sight, and this habit enhances their brain-neural connections, along with strengthening their tiny finger and hand muscles.
So, although playing with toys looks like just a pastime, it prepares your child for a much more complex world outside the comfort of your home!
This blog will cover everything from types of motor skills to how motor skills develop with toys to child developmental toys!
Understanding Motor Skills
Let us begin by understanding the types of motor skills. They are divided into two based on their stages of development.
That is, it initiates with fine motor skills, which later on develop into gross motor skills. However, they differ in the following ways.
I. Fine Motor Skills
This includes small muscles of the hands, fingers, and wrists for precise and small movements like eating, dressing, grasping, etc.
It develops in early childhood, that is, around 2-5 years of age. This fosters self-sufficiency for small yet vital tasks in children.
Boost: Problem-solving, hand-eye coordination, dexterity, and cognitive development.
II. Gross Motor Skills
This includes the involvement of larger muscles of the legs, arms, and torso. The movement is also generally large, like running, jumping, swimming, etc.
It begins in infancy and improves during toddler years. It is used extensively during playing, exercising, crawling, etc. Such movements are necessary for healthy fitness and active mobility in children.
Boost: Body balance, posture, body movement, independence, confidence, and flexibility.
The Role of Toys in Developing Motor Skills
Toys have immense potential to upskill the development of the child through its learning phases. This happens due to their interactive play with them that aids their physical, mental, and emotional development.
For example,
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Games like building blocks, Lego, and stacking rings enhance hand-eye coordination, visual and spatial skills, problem-solving, and fine motor skills.
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Activities like puzzles, drawing, coloring, etc. enhance creativity, dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and fine motor skills.
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Pretend plays with kitchen sets, robots, dolls, cars, or superhero capes enhance creativity, social skills, language, and communication skills.
The connection between play and cognitive growth
When children engage themselves in playing and manipulating toys, their full-body interaction with the toy forms several brain-neural connections in the child’s mind.
This further helps them understand the world around them due to their active engagement, upskilling, and participation in various games.
Children who have an active childhood in terms of brain and body exercises turn out to be very confident, smart, independent, and risk-takers in life.
This is because resolving any challenge in their games helps boost their confidence, and constant playing inculcates this habit of tackling real-life challenges as well. Thus, this encourages cognitive development in the children.
Top Toys for Enhancing Motor Skills
Let us now understand the top tips for improving various motor skills in children.
I. Fine Motor Skill Toys: Small Moves, Big Impact
i. Building Blocks: It includes stacking high or forming various structures while trying to fit different complex shapes into each other. They demand precise hand-eye coordination, visual and spatial awareness, and problem-solving skills.
ii. Puzzles: Solving a puzzle of any kind, be it a jigsaw puzzle, shape sorters, memory matching games, word search, or pattern blocks, requires patience, problem-solving, decision-making, and fine motor skills.
iii. Lacing Beads: This activity serves as a mini challenge for those tiny fingers as it improves hand-eye coordination, grasping control, focus, dexterity, and visual-spatial awareness skills.
II. Gross Motor Skill Toys: Moves, Bigger Fun
i. Ride-On Toys: These include toys like scooters, cycles, swing cars, etc. that encourage kids’ physical movements like running, climbing, jumping, etc. They enhance muscle strength and improve balance, coordination, visual and spatial awareness, and problem-solving skills.
ii. Balls: Actions like dribbling, tossing, catching, kicking, or throwing enhance hand-eye coordination, strengthen arms and leg muscles, and improve visual and spatial awareness skills.
Brownie point: Playing catch would not only improve their motor and cognitive skills but also their social, language, and communication skills.
iii. Climbing Sets: These are some of the best tools to strengthen kids’ legs and arms muscles, coordination, agility, sportsmanship, adventure, and confidence in kids.
Age-Appropriate Toy Recommendations
Although toys are important, it is equally essential to provide them according to children’s age and learning phase. This is because it serves as a step-by-step guide towards their full active development.
Let us now understand some age-appropriate toys for children’s stable and stage-wise development.
I. Infants (0-12 months)
The most basic skills developed during these months are sensory and motor skills. This is because of their endless curiosity to understand themselves and their surroundings.
i. Soft Toys: The tactile stimulation triggers the development of a baby's sense of touch.
ii. Rattles: This encourages auditory, visual, and tactile stimulation that enhances the sensory and hand-eye coordination in children.
iii. Activity gyms: Consider it as a baby's “Gym Khanas,” where they can perform their tummy time and also exercise their arms, shoulders, and legs by trying to reach out to different items like dangling mirrors, soft toys, rattles, etc.
II. Toddlers (1-3 years)
This is when they learn to crawl, walk, and run. This stage triggers the development of basic motor skills, thus encouraging balance, coordination, and independence. Toys are an important source to develop these skills.
i. Stacking Toys
This includes rings, blocks, cups, etc., and demands efficient hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, spatial awareness, and problem-solving abilities.
While playing, the children also understand various shapes, colors, order, etc. This helps them lay their foundational learning skills.
ii. Push-Pull Toys.
Believe it or not, this is one of the most favorite and important child developmental toys to enhance their motor skills.
This is because toys with wheels attached to them for pulling and pushing make kids curious about their actions and reactions. Also, while walking with these rolling toys, they stretch their arms and legs and thus learn coordination, balance, and independence for physical movement.
iii. Shape Sorters
These toys are responsible for developing motor as well as important cognitive skills in children. Such toys include various-shaped holes and different cutouts to fit in.
While doing so, children use their efficient hand-eye coordination and cognitive, spatial, visual, and focus skills. This proves that although motor skills seem simple, they are intricately linked to the coordination of the entire body.
III. Preschoolers (3-5 years)
At this stage, the children are ready to explore the complexities of the real world, which further improves their social, language, communication, leadership, and sportsmanship skills.
Here, motor skills act as a platform for the development of other such essential skills.
i. Tricycles
These are essential for the strengthening of the core and glute muscles of the legs in children. Riding them also enhances children’s hand-eye and leg coordination, along with efficient visual, balance, and spatial awareness skills. It also aids healthy digestion.
ii. Simple Puzzles
Puzzle-solving at any age exercises the mind. Children solve basic puzzles like shape matching, coloring, spotting the difference, finding hidden objects, jigsaw puzzles, etc. This enhances their motor, focus, cognitive, spatial, and problem-solving skills in them.
Besides, they also help in improving social, language, and communication skills in children.
Safety Considerations When Choosing Toys
While toys form an important part of children’s active growth and development, it is also essential to check for their safety while selecting one for your children.
Some of the safety precautions include:
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Ensure that the toy is age-appropriate for your child to ensure an optimum step-by-step learning process.
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The toys should be non-toxic, BPA-free, lead-free, and phthalate-free to prevent chemical leaching and ingestion by the babies.
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Select the toys with round and smooth edges to prevent the kids’ from injury.
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Ensure that the toys are devoid of any small hanging or loose parts that could be ingested by the kids.
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Immediately discard the broken toys that could cause injury to babies.
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Toys consisting of batteries or electric connections present a risk of electric shock or ingestion in the case of button batteries. So, such toys must be instructed to be used only under adult supervision.
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Check for warning labels before purchasing the toys.
Tips for Parents to Encourage Motor Skill Development
Parents being the role models can help in fostering essential motor and other important skills in children. Some tips for being a part of their development are:
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Motivate them to run, jog, crawl, etc., by engaging yourself with them in the play.
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Plan outdoor play in gardens, gyms, trampolines, etc., to enhance their muscle strength, balance, and overall coordination.
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Be their play partner until they make friends to prepare them for further social interactions.
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Let the children make their mess during their meal time. That is one of their most important yummy lessons.
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Encourage creativity and efficient fine motor skills in children by indulging in crafts, origami, drawing, and painting with them.
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Include the kids in some household chores to strengthen their motor skills.
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Motivate your kids to dance, participate in extracurricular activities in school, and also organize your own “Tiny-tots play mela” as a social gathering.
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Keep track of their progress and keep throwing them into more challenging scenarios for their improvement. For example, a kid who has learned to walk requires a walker to reach the next milestone.
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Provide them with various textured toys to enhance their sensory and visual stimulation.
Conclusion
Toys are important tools to accelerate and promote the growth and development of efficient motor and other important skills in children.
Hence, the above blog has provided a clear picture of how toys help in developing various fine and gross motor skills, in addition to other cognitive, social, language, communication, focus, problem-solving, spatial awareness, and decision-making skills in children.
Therefore, as parents, it is important to provide them with various developmentally beneficial toys to help them explore all the possible skills around them for their healthy development.
