Top tips for physical development
Children need access to indoor and outdoor environments to support their physical growth. Gross motor skills are an important part of your child’s development, from birth to their school years.
Rolling, sitting up, crawling, walking, running, jumping, hopping, skipping, spinning, turning, twisting, pushing and pulling are all big milestones in your child’s growth.
Tummy time
As soon as babies are born, they are able to enjoy short amounts of time laying on their tummies. The movements of their neck, limbs and head during these sessions help to strengthen their physical development.
The more they develop these movements, this will help with their coordination and build muscles to support their crawling and later on, sitting.
Great useful information can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/tummy-time/zjm2jhv
Booklet_5_Practical_ideas_for_physically_active_play.pdf (soscn.org)
Baby exercises
Ensuring your baby is safely on the floor - why not try strengthening and developing their muscles. This can be done by gentle stretches of your baby's arms and legs as this helps to build and strengthen their gross motor skills.
During these sessions remember to keep eye-contact and expressive facial movements as this helps to keep baby engaged as they follow you with their eyes.
Unstructured play
As babies and children start moving around, create safe spaces for them for them to explore unstructured play. Try to have a few stimulating toys, materials and safe everyday objects (e.g. plastic bottles, plastic utensils).
We don't need to buy expensive toys to encourage play, especially during unstructured play. Children are able to use their imagination, exploration and curiosity to make their own decisions about how to use their environment to create fun learning activities.
During these sessions always try to be led by the child - follow their games, instructions and try to be a participant, not a leader.
Structured play
Structured play is usually adult-led, but it does not always have to be.
Play may have been set out by adults to encourage children to focus on a particular learning objective. These could include playing a puzzle, organising a sport game, playing a board game, doing gardening or baking with the children.
A variety of skills are learned during structured play such as :
-
social skills,
-
cognitive skills,
-
creativity, imagination,
-
self-confidence
-
self esteem building.
It has been researched that structured play helps develop a child's 'school readiness' for following instructions, working collaboratively and listening attentively.