How Are Babies' Motor Skills Developed?
We can look at a baby's development process from many angles. For parents, watching babies explore, learn and develop their skills is an exciting and equally delightful process. Motor skills, alongside developmental activities such as your baby's movement and balance, also form the foundation of the skills they'll acquire in later life.
What Fun Activities Support Your Baby's Motor Skill Development?
As the Little Gusto team, we've put together some activities that let you support your baby's motor skills while enjoying quality time together:
You can provide your baby with toys of different textures, specially made for babies and safe for them to use. These toys will boost the sense of touch and hand-eye coordination that form the foundation of your baby's motor skills.
Try the BLW (baby-led weaning) feeding method; let your baby, once they've started solid food, feed themselves. Holding food in their hands and bringing it to their mouth will help develop both their grip and their confidence. BLW feeding can get quite messy. To keep your baby's clothes and surroundings clean while they eat, you might like to try the Little Gusto BLW feeding bib.
Play throwing and catching games with objects; gently throw small, soft toys, rings and similar objects to your baby and let them try to catch them. After a while, they'll start throwing them back to you too. This game strengthens your baby's hand muscles and develops their grasping skills.
Moving toys are also great fun and very developmentally useful. The movement of toys like these will catch your baby's attention. Your baby following moving toys helps develop their visual tracking abilities and hand-eye coordination.
Simple wooden puzzles, where a piece can only go into a block when the matching shapes line up, are very useful for developing your baby's problem-solving skills.
By getting hold of some non-toxic paints, you can let your baby's hands get freely messy. Dipping their hands into paint and making random marks on a blank piece of paper helps develop their hand-eye coordination and creativity.
It's worth remembering that every moment you spend with your baby matters greatly for their development. Playing with your baby helps strengthen their motor skills and supports their ability to explore. At Little Gusto, we strongly recommend trying the activities we've listed above for your baby's healthy development, observing your baby throughout the process, and continuing on with new activities suited to their development.
The Little Gusto Team