Every parent wants to ensure that their child develops their motor skills and coordination adequately. In fact, many parents will help their children learn these skills at a young age. If you’re one of these parents, here are four activities that you can practice with your toddler to accelerate their motor and coordination skills.
Play-Dough
Play-dough is not just a colorful material that you used to play with for fun when you were a child. Rather, this putty allows for a lot of sensory development in children. Fine motor skills can be developed by simply having your child pinch, stretch, squeeze, or roll the play-dough with their hands. It requires their body to utilize both hands in conjunction with one another.
Brushing Their Teeth
While you may enjoy the time that you’ve spent with your little one brushing their teeth, it’s time to let them give it a shot. Brushing is a practice that they’re going to be using for the rest of their life. It’s also a great activity that promotes coordination. If you spend a moment and really think about the motion that you use to brush your teeth, you’ll start to realize just how much coordination it actually takes.
Building Blocks
Childrens big building blocks allow for a fun, creative, and educational experience for your children. By having them connect and stack their blocks, you’re encouraging them to use their fine motor skills. Kids that regularly play with building blocks tend to be better at solving puzzles, possess a higher level of persistence, and feel a sense of accomplishment that those kids who don’t play with blocks do. It’s best to start with larger building blocks for your toddler. As they get proficient with the larger blocks, go ahead and provide them with smaller ones.
Painting
Finger painting is a great way to work on eye coordination and manual dexterity. If you want to up your game, have your child use a brush to paint. This extra object will help them to gain great control over their coordination. You can even purchase scratch-and-sniff paints to add some extra sensory development into this creative time.
Helping to develop your toddler’s motor and coordination skills is a must to set them up for the best chance of success in life. The above are just some of the many activities that you can use to help improve these skills. The more activities that you can include in a regular day, the faster your child will develop these skills.
