Stimulating Motor Skills Development

Here are some simple ways to stimulate motor skills development in babies.

• How to stimulate motor skills development?
  • 0 to 3 months
  • 3 to 6 months
  • 6 to 9 months
  • 9 months to 1 year
  • 1 to 2 years
• Helping in Fine Motor Skills Development
  • Finger play
  • Games with peas
  • Play dough or clay
  • Sand castle construction

0 to 3 months

Babies love to be in the company of their parents. They enjoy watching and listening to them. It's time you talk more to your baby. Repeat the same sounds that they produce. Baby's vision is only partially developed at birth. Baby should be encouraged to use his vision for its development. He should be able to track objects during the first few months. You can stimulate vision by hanging a mobile black and white toy over his crib or jingling a bright coloured rattle in front of your baby. Make her follow the rattle with her eyes, while listening to the sound.

3 to 6 months

You can develop baby's reaching skill as by this time the baby will have learnt to grab objects within her reach. Reaching helps to develop arm muscles, and spatial awareness. You can do this by keeping a toy just out of his reach and encouraging him to reach for it. Also by making the baby lie on his back, if you dangle things above him, he will try to reach for them. Use toys of high contrasting colours because babies are attracted to such contrasting colours.

Give your baby enough tummy time whenever the baby is awake, i.e put your baby down on his tummy and allow him to try and lift up his head. He can also do a lot of pushing with his arms. This will strengthen and develop neck and arm muscles. Hold each of baby's feet in each of your hands and do a cycling action. This will stretch the leg muscles and also make them strong. To improve rolling over, direct your baby's attention towards a small toy held above his head, then move it slowly to one side encouraging him to turn his body to that side, thus rolling over. Play games like Patty cake, which will be a good exercise to cheek muscles, as the baby chuckles and laughs with you.

6 to 9 months

During this period, baby will be able to sit up by himself. You can play more games with your baby like rolling back and forth a ball. You can try throwing a ball to him and making him try and catch it. You can get him to pour out the toys from a container and encourage him to put them back into the container, during which time he tries to reach for and grab them. Allow him to enjoy splashing water in a bathtub. The baby begins to understand object permanence during this phase i.e they understand that objects that are hidden from sight continue to exist. At this stage you can play hide and seek with him. Touch baby's hands, feet, arms , legs toes, fingers, ears, eyes and nose and name them when the baby is watching you., this will create body awareness.

9 months to 1 year

Babies will be crawling and trying to pull up and stand during this period. You can set up obstacles in the way of your crawling baby using household objects. The baby will try to find ways to cross the obstacle and have something to conquer. Encourage your baby to pull up to standing position by putting toys on the table out of reach. On his effort to reach for it he will try to stand up. Babies during this age are interested in ripping and tearing, so give them all types of paper and aluminium foil, which will develop their fine motor skills. Baby enjoys music right from birth. At this stage you can provide him with toys that will produce some kinds of music if he shakes it or presses it. Put the baby on the support of your raised knees and sing the rhyme "Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall". When Humpty-Dumpty falls, let your baby fall gently. Baby enjoys it and it is a good exercise as well.

1 to 2 years

You can guide babies who are capable of standing on their own, to start walking. Here are some simple ways you can help.

Keep yourself a little distance away from your child, and encourage him to take steps towards you. Allow the babies who have started to walk to feel the ground with their sole and feet. When doing so, they will develop good balance in their new effort of learning to walk. After the toddler has mastered the skills of sitting, crawling, standing and walking, help him develop fine motor skills with various games and other activities as shown below.

Fine Motor Skills Development

• Finger play

  Provide her with toys like balls, books and rattles to manipulate with hands and fingers. Such manipulating will improve grasping skills. You can also give her solid food to hold with her fingers to improve her grasping skills. Finger painting can be used to exercise little fingers.

• Games with peas

  Place peas in a container and get your toddler to fill various other small containers with peas using their hands. This will be a good exercise to strengthen fingers and also make them flexible.

• Play dough or clay

  Play dough or clay is a good play toy. It involves hand and finger movements as the child squeezes the clay, rolls, shapes and moulds it to her liking. You can teach pretend play, pretend the play dough is an eatable and ask your baby to pinch small pieces and feed his baby doll. Pinching develops fine motor skills. You can give her even the real edible dough which will be easier to shape with her small hands.

• Sand castle construction

  When your toddler builds a tower in the sand and keeps a flower or feather on top of it, she sharpens her fine motor skills.

Other Motor Skills Development Activities

• Teach them stringing large beads into heavy thread.
• While reading books with your baby encourage her to do the page turning.
• Blow bubbles outside and let the baby try to catch them with her hands.
• Toys that can be stacked, pulled or pushed are good skill builders.
• Take water in a dish, put a large spoon in and give it to your infant. Allow him to scoop out the water. Baby learns to control his hand movement with the spoon, thus learning to eat without spilling food.
• Nursery rhymes like Itsy-Bitsy Spider and This Little Piggy can be used to exercise fingers. You can also get your child to button and unbutton a shirt to exercise fingers.
• Drawing and colouring with crayons, chalk or small pencils will help develop the muscles of the little hands.
• Colouring books, puzzle books and crayons are helpful for hand-eye co-ordination.
• Sorting and building skills - Use blocks of different sizes or any other material to build and manipulate.