What Are Some Activities I Can Do with Infants and Toddlers to Promote Gross Motor and Fine Motor Development?

Question

Answer

Here's a list of some curricular activities for gross motor and fine motor development.

• Provide daily tummy time for babies.
• Place toys in sight of the child and make it easy for them to reach.
• Place children on their backs on a play mat with hanging objects and allow them to swat, reach, or kick the objects.
• Let babies experience and explore objects and books with varying textures and surfaces.
• Let babies hold and turn the pages of board books.
• Provide toys that allow for grasping, twisting, holding, and pushing buttons.
• Provide playdough or other soft sensory items. 
• For early walkers, provide wheeled toys for pushing and pulling and for carrying objects like a small shopping cart.
• Allow babies opportunities to hold their bottle and later explore finger food and feed themselves.
• Provide stackable toys and chunky peg and block toys.
• Provide toys that are similar or like objects.
• Place items in plastic containers so they can practice opening and closing the containers.
• Provide balls for rolling and tossing.
• Provide toys for stabilizing new walkers and objects for climbing and strengthening their balance.
• Sing songs with rhythm and clap hands to the music.
• Let children practice with musical instruments.

Perception and motor development go hand in hand. When infants and toddlers learn about cause and effect or properties of objects they're learning it through their senses as well as learning about it in a physical way. Motor experience sharpens and modifies infants’ perceptual understanding. There is a two-way connection between perception and movement. It gives children useful information about themselves and their world. Children learn about cause and effect and the properties of objects and actions. It supports learning through conversations, vocabulary development, and ways to connect learning.

For example, when you say, "Do you see the bluebird?" they are visually seeing it. When you ask, "What do you hear?" they're tapping into their hearing. If the child is shaking a rattle say, "When you shake the rattle it makes a sound." They are using their body to make the rattle make a sound so they begin to learn about cause and effect but they're also getting a sense about their body and tapping into their sensory capacity. When they drop a toy, they're learning about gravity, but it hits the ground and makes a sound. There's an integrative nature to the way in which children are learning.

For additional information watch the video "Supporting Physical Development in Infants and Toddlers" at the Center for Early Childhood Education Home on Eastern Connecticut State University's website, www.easternct.edu.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Exploring Physical and Language Development of Infants and Toddlers, presented by Jean Barbre, EdD.