Play is one of the main tools through which your baby’s motor development is stimulated, which is why it is so important to choose the games and toys you offer well.
Motor-development-through-play
Establishing a balanced lifestyle from childhood is essential to guarantee the motor development and future health of your little one, even though we often think that habits come at an older age. Although we often pay close attention to the importance of adequate nutritional education in the early stages, we forget that there are other equally vital aspects, such as the habit of physical activity. Educating children to move more has a positive impact on overall development and growth. In fact, nowadays, it is increasingly common for children to lead a sedentary life, without the opportunity to play freely, to move, or to run. This lifestyle reaches such a point that the proper development of their motor skills can be hindered.
Play and the child’s motor development
At birth, your baby is an individual with potential abilities that allow him to come into contact with the environment. She can perceive various stimuli through the senses (sounds, lights, colors, human faces) and express discomfort or satisfaction through crying and through simple motor skills. On the other hand, between 0 and 3 years old, children experiment and explore the environment using their bodies, learning, trying, and making mistakes, although at this stage a conscious perception of the body in space has not yet developed. In this age range, custom trikes are the most appropriate form of play for them. For this reason, it has been proven that the development process that occurs in the maturation of physiological functions is strongly influenced and stimulated by the interaction between the child and the environment.
Between the ages of 0 and 12, children develop awareness of their bodies, and body awareness evolves in static or dynamic states, especially in relation to space and surrounding objects. As we have seen, trying, falling, getting up, and trying again are extremely valuable activities that promote the development of children’s motor skills. Each movement helps them improve balance and coordination, in addition to contributing to security and self-esteem.
Therefore, it is necessary to encourage movement games, provide children with toys that encourage them to test their motor skills, and stimulate them to try new movements and perfect new skills. The development process, and in particular that of motor skills, is strongly influenced by the stimuli and tensions it receives from the environment. Games, fun by nature, are the best stimulus for children, especially when it comes to the development of motor skills.
Teaching of movement
The most notable stages of your little one’s psychomotor development begin with crawling around 9 months and continue with the acquisition of the upright position and the first steps around 12 months. Generally, by 18 months, most babies have learned to walk correctly and can climb stairs with assistance and go down them without assistance, as well as stacking and building toys. At 24 months, toddlers can run and experience jumping for the first time. The ability to balance on one limb also begins to develop at this age. After the first few months, your little one begins to develop other types of skills. Between 2 and 3 years old, motor learning is more established: children at this age can run, jump, and kick a ball deftly. This greater freedom of movement improves safety when the child is exploring.
It is important to remember that developmental stages are subjective and vary from child to child; Motor learning does not escape this, and the times and ways in which children acquire skills may vary.
The child’s learning develops thanks to three fundamental factors:
– The nervous system, which helps plan movements.
– The bones, muscles, and joints, which allow movements to be carried out
– The environmental conditions, which provide the motivation or stimulus to move.
Each child’s individual progress is influenced by the development of each of these factors and the ways in which they intertwine. Therefore, providing children with stimuli and motivation to test their motor skills through play is crucial to promoting progress.
Movement games, your best ally
Movement games stimulate the child’s range of skills, in particular:
Motor skills or the ability to learn motor skills, allowing one to execute basic motor patterns or gestures in reaction to external stimuli. It also allows you to run, hit, kick, or throw a ball.
General motor coordination is the ability to perform a movement in the most effective way; the ability to learn, control, and adjust movements, adapting them to different needs, such as trying to hit bowling with a ball. These activities are those that stimulate hand-eye coordination and refine the precision of certain movements.
Precision, which develops in line with hand-eye coordination, gradually improves control of movements and progressively enhances balance. These skills allow the child to make increasingly precise movements.
Balance is a special coordination skill that allows you to perform motor activities in limited spaces or on unstable surfaces. Balance is key in all sports and the movements we do in daily life; It is a skill that must be developed from birth and continually stimulated. Balance depends on the signals received from the auditory and visual organs, but also through our sense of proprioception or our ability to receive information from the nerve endings present in our muscles, tendons, and joints, for example in the ankle and knee.
As you can see, there are various games that involve the development and execution of some of the skills we have mentioned. Throwing the ball, building a tower, or challenging him to organize a game of pieces helps him in the process of motor development.