motor skills

Movement Matters!

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In Montessori, we honor children’s movement, even from birth! One reason why we focus so much on movement for young children is that healthy movement development in the first two years of life can provide our children with considerable benefits in the years to come. 

So, let’s take a quick look at the science to better understand how to support our infants and toddlers during this critical time. 

Movement & Myelination

At birth, movements are spontaneous and reflexive, like sucking and swallowing which are essential for survival. These early reflexive movements originate from the spinal cord and brain stem, but soon movement matures from the head down. 

Our brains depend upon our sensory nervous system to share information about the surrounding world. This information actually shapes our brains’ connections and neural pathways.

For infants, these neural connections are just forming. As electrical signals move from one area of the brain to another, as well as down through the spinal cord to the rest of the body, they need smooth passage along what are called axons. Axons basically act like electrical wires conducting electrical signals. 

Those signals need to be transmitted quickly and efficiently. Just like electrical wires need insulation so the electricity isn’t dissipated, axons need insulation, too! For more rapid passage of these electrical messages, axons become insulated by a layer of lipids and proteins, a process called myelination.

Babies are born without much myelin, which explains why their reaction times are so slow and movements so effortful. But with each experience and repetition, the myelin sheaths around axons get thicker. Myelin essentially greases the wires and allows signals to travel along the axons faster and more effectively.

More myelination in infants’ motor systems allows them to lift their heads, reach out, roll over, crawl, and eventually walk and run.

Mobiles for Movement

Within the first weeks of life after birth, babies begin to learn to control their eyes which means some of the first myelination happens with infants’ eye muscles. 

To support this development, we provide carefully designed and placed mobiles, which help babies develop their visual capacities for focus and tracking. Changed as developmentally appropriate, mobiles offer newborns the opportunity to focus on an object, track it, perceive sensory details, and eventually attempt to reach for it.  

When infants begin to reach for the mobile, we begin to offer something slightly different, like a bell hanging from a ribbon. Babies will try and try again, with great concentration and focus, to move their arms so as to make contact with the object and cause it to move or make a sound. They thus discover the relationship between sight and touch. 

At first, physical contact with a hanging bell or ball may appear haphazard. Yet infants are seeing the item and making a muscular effort to connect with what they see. With repeated practice, infants are actually developing the myelin coating that will make their future efforts to reach and eventually grasp more efficient and successful.

Safe Space for Movement

For similar reasons, infants need space for movement. Often, we’re more apt to hold our infants or keep them in carriers. However, babies benefit from having space to move, and almost slither, their bodies on the floor. When you create the time and space for these slow whole-body movements, you’ll see that infants will often slither their bodies around in a clockwise direction!

When infants attempt to slither and move, they are very focused. This concentration allows them to start connecting how the mind and body work together. In Your Child’s Growing Mind: Brain Development and Learning from Birth to Adolescence, Dr. Jane Healy offers an important reminder: “After birth, physical activities are one of the child’s main means of advancing physical, intellectual, and emotional growth, so you should encourage many forms of body movement.”

Clothing also matters. In order to safely move their bodies, babies need clothing that doesn’t restrict their movements. Comfortable fabrics with forgiving elastics are best. Light clothing around the arms and legs offers more opportunities for movement and exploration. It’s also best to allow babies to have bare feet so they can have more sensory input and more traction as they begin to move.

Hands Send Information to the Brain

In addition to gross motor development, which will eventually progress from slithering to crawling to walking, infants are taking in information about the world through their hands. 

In this process, babies develop an awareness of the connection between what they observe and what they touch. Sensory experiences begin to be linked to their mental development. Although little mitts are adorable and seem useful to keep infants from scratching themselves, it’s much more beneficial for babies’ development to have their hands uncovered. 

Eventually, children begin to use their hands to not only take in information about the world but also to begin manipulating things in their surroundings. To help this development of hand movements, our little ones need purposeful activities that allow for exploration and the development of different types of hand grasps.

Children’s development of their hands is directly connected to the development of their brains. The brain sends a signal to the hand, and the hand moves and sends a sensory message back to the brain. With this new information, the brain can guide the hand in new ways, thus allowing the hand to discover more information by performing the new direction. And the feedback loop continues!

Gross Motor Skills Start with Tummy Time

While infants are developing these fine motor skills through coordination of their hands, they are also developing gross motor abilities. Early on babies need sufficient opportunities to develop large muscles, in particular their truck and neck. Thus, time lying on their belly is important, as this provides the opportunity for infants to push up with their arms and develop a stronger torso and neck. 

Tummy time “push-ups” with the arms while in the stomach position are key in forming needed coordination and strength for all of their subsequent large-muscle development. Then, as infants develop enough torso and neck control to push themselves into a seated position, they free their hands for further exploration and development.  

A similar process occurs when toddlers are able to move from cruising while holding on to objects for support, to walking without assistance. Suddenly they are able to move through their environment and use their hands for purposeful endeavors. 

From “tummy-time” to rolling, to sitting up, to scooting, to crawling, and eventually, to cruising and walking, our young children are beginning to explore their world and develop their sense of self. 

Developing Purposeful Movements

Dr. Maria Montessori explains that, as children gain strength through these activities, they begin to look toward those around them to imitate our actions and learn how to be a member of society. Children are interested in what we do and how we do it. They want to use their bodies in new and purposeful ways. 

From the first days after birth, when a newborn can only control their eyes to see a mobile to when they move their hand and make contact with a bell hanging on a ribbon, these experiences help children recognize that they can control their movements. The sensory feedback helps strengthen an impulse within children to look or to try to move. Every experience involves movement. The more infants move, the more myelin they form, and the stronger their ability to act according to their own volition.

Movement Matters!

Sensorial experiences are vital for the development of movement and children use their movements to extend their understanding of the world. They see, hear, touch, and taste. The more they use parts of their body to explore their world, the more their movements become refined and the more they are able to make sense of their surroundings.  

Children need the opportunity to explore, practice, and repeat movements through simulating and purposeful activity in a safe and supportive setting. Through these repeated experiences, our infants and toddlers develop their muscles, perfect their movements, and ultimately perfect themselves.

Although every child follows a typical timetable in terms of developing motor skills, their surroundings can either hinder or promote the acquisition and mastery of these abilities. Providing appropriate opportunities offers our children the chance for repeated practice and thus speeds the myelination process. Ultimately, as children develop their motor abilities, they come to recognize themselves as competent, capable, and unique individuals.

Want to see some competent, capable, and unique children moving through well-designed learning environments? Contact us today to schedule a visit! 

Developing Fine Motor Skills

Developing fine motor skills is critical for everyday activities. There are many ways to help children along this process, and Montessori classrooms have specifically designed materials that are intended to strengthen the small muscles in the hands and wrists. The strengthening of these muscles allows us to make more precise movements and perform detailed tasks, as opposed to the large muscles required for gross motor activities like jumping and walking.

While fine motor development is supported at various levels in Montessori environments, we can observe the bulk of this work occurring during the primary years, when a child is between the ages of 3 and 6. Three areas of the classroom play particularly important roles: the sensorial, practical life, and language work. In this article we highlight some of the ways Montessori materials in these areas help children strengthen their hand and wrist muscles. Interestingly, these materials have other purposes as well, teaching a wide range of skills.

Sensorial Materials

The Pink Tower

A series of pink cubes are meant to be stacked vertically from largest to smallest, with the top block measuring 1cm cubed. Using this material requires a child to use their focus and carefully balance each block, using precise movements as the blocks get smaller.

Knobbed Cylinders

Wooden cylinders of varying sizes fit into a block designed for this purpose. Each cylinder has a tiny knob for children to hold onto, and there is only one way to fit the cylinders correctly. In addition to developing fine motor skills and their pincer grip, this is one of many materials that aid in developing visual discrimination.

Mystery Bags

A small cloth bag containing tiny objects and miniatures, a child is meant to feel inside, hold the objects, and determine what they are without seeing them.

Practical Life Materials

Clothespins

Montessori students learn to wash clothes or linens used in the classroom. One step in the process is, of course, hanging the cloth to dry using clothespins.

Spray Bottles

Spray bottles are used for a variety of practical life activities in the classroom, including window washing and plant care. The repeated action of squeezing the trigger on the bottle is great for strengthening hand muscles.

Crumbers and Dustpans/Brushes

Again, with a focus on precision and careful use, there are several practical life materials used for cleaning up the classroom that are also fantastic fine motor tools. Dustpans and brushes are used for cleaning up messes on the floor, while crumbers are similar sets meant for picking up on the surface of a table - after eating but before washing the table.

Cooking Utensils

A major part of Montessori practical life work is food preparation. There are countless kitchen tools that are used in this learning, and so many of them require the development of fine motor skills. Just a few of these include: vegetable peelers, knives for chopping, apple slicers, whisks, and spatulas.

Dressing Frames

One of the most direct fine motor materials, the dressing frames teach children to fasten clothing in a variety of ways. A wood frame with two cloth panels is attached in the center; children practice lacing, buttoning, buckling, snapping, zipping, pinning, and more.

Language

Sandpaper Letters

Perhaps one of the most famous Montessori materials, the sandpaper letters are small wooden tiles with textured letters in the surface. Indirect preparation for handwriting and reading, children use their index finger to trace the shape of the letter while saying the sound it makes aloud.

Moveable Alphabet

When learning how to write, children are ready to share their ideas before they are ready to grip a pencil. The moveable alphabet is a set of tiny wooden letters that children lay out on a work rug to spell words, phrases, and sentences. Organizing these small letters takes plenty of hand control.

Metal Insets

Another material that is meant to indirectly prepare the child for handwriting, The metal insets are like a stencil that children are meant to use colored pencils and trace, create lined patterns within, and follow a series of directions to recreate the shapes on paper. This is often a child’s first real experience with learning how to hold a pencil properly, and aids in developing the critical pincer grasp. Some Montessori environments even provide triangle-shaped pencils to aid in this process.

Bonus: Pin Punch

A small wooden or plastic stylus with a sharp metal tip is used to make perforations. Children will often trace a shape onto a piece of construction paper, place the paper onto a specific soft surface, and use the pin punch tool to make a series of holes along the drawn line. If they take their time and do this correctly, they are able to punch out their shape upon completion.

 

Want to learn more? Curious to discover ways you can support your child’s fine motor growth at home? We welcome questions and love to talk about children’s development. Contact us today.

The Keys to Handwriting Success

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This is not a news flash:
Handwriting instruction is disappearing in schools across the United States.

You’ve probably already heard this sad revelation, and while it’s certainly not true for all schools, more and more are eschewing handwriting instruction to make more time for other, standards-based skills.  The result is a generation of children who are not gaining a sense of how important it is to be able to write beautifully and they are simply not learning cursive – period.  

If this makes you cringe, here’s the good news: people are noticing and speaking up, and some schools are finding ways to fit handwriting back into the schedule.  Even better news?  Montessori schools never dropped it in the first place.  Read on to learn more about how this 100+ year-old educational approach guides children in the art of writing beautifully.

Indirect Preparation

If you walk into a Montessori toddler or primary classroom, you will see very young children working with materials that develop fine motor skills.  While fine motor proficiency can serve children in a wide variety of ways, Montessori intentionally created materials that strengthen the hand as indirect preparation for handwriting.

Each time a three-year-old lifts a knobbed cylinder they are developing proper pincer grip.  This same action is repeated in many other materials.  The child may be working to joyfully refine a sensorial skill, but at the very same time their tiny fingers are slowly working their way toward being able to hold a pencil correctly.

Many Montessori materials are designed to be used working from left to right in order to prepare the child to move in that direction while writing.  Even the materials themselves are organized in a left to right fashion on the shelves.

Manipulating a Pencil

Long before they are ready to write a story (or even a word!), Montessori children begin learning how to carefully manipulate a pencil.  The metal insets are a beautiful material that were designed specifically to prepare the hand for writing.  While the shapes in the material are reminiscent of a geometry lesson, that is not the primary intention.  What’s meant to be the focus is the teaching of a variety of handwriting skills, including pencil grip, applying appropriate pressure, moving the pencil left to right, and further strengthening the muscles of the hand to build stamina.

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Early Letter Formation

Montessori primary classrooms are equipped with a special material that helps children learn how to form letters.  The sandpaper letters are wooden tiles with letters made out of a sand-textured surface.  The children use their fingers to trace the shape of each letter, and later use the tiles as a reference while learning to write for the first time.  

Another option for children to practice letter formation is to use their finger and ‘draw’ the letters in a small tray of sand.  Both sand writing and using the sandpaper letters appeals to the sensorial nature of the primary child, making these activities fun.  

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Cursive or Print?

By the time a Montessori student is 4 or 5 years old they begin writing joyfully because they are well prepared.  Montessori schools typically focus on teaching children to write in cursive, even in the primary classroom.  We have found that there are many benefits to emphasizing this style over manuscript/print writing.

Learning to write in cursive has many advantages:

  • It’s nearly impossible to reverse letters in cursive.

  • Cursive writers can read print, but the reverse is not always true.

  • The ligatures in cursive may help early readers see groups of letters (oa, ing, th, and so on).

  • The flow of cursive words allows the writer to focus on the ideas of the writing rather than the formation of individual letters in isolation.

A Continuation

When children enter a Montessori elementary program, their teacher will emphasize the mastery of cursive writing and take the time to review any letters or skill gaps they may have.  From here on, children practice constantly.  They have notebooks they are expected to record their daily work in, and that work is expected to be written beautifully and neatly.  Not only that, but the children themselves take great pride in the beauty of their own writing.

As time goes on, students do eventually learn skills such as keyboarding.  Fortunately, they have been given a foundation that emphasizes the power of neat handwriting.  In our fast-paced, shortcut-filled world, it’s nice to think that our children will grow up to enjoy sitting down to craft a thoughtful letter, using a pen, some paper, and their own hand.

Losing our Grip

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Last week we posted the following article (Losing our Grip http://bit.ly/2ghoMsv) on our facebook page. The article discussed the increasing number of children in kindergarten without the fine motor skills needed to manipulate scissors, hold pencils, etc. The New York Times reported in February that public schools in New York City saw a 30 percent increase in the number of students referred to occupational therapy, with the number jumping 20 percent in three years in Chicago and 30 percent over five years in Los Angeles.

Why is this?  The article points to three causes:

  1. Our culture has increased pressure on parents to involve young children in organized activities. More organized activities does not equal more body awareness. There is less time for free play and opportunities for children to manipulate their environments to understand spatial concepts. As we Montessorians know, young children learn by doing, not by being told what to do.
  2. Parental Fear. Some parents are afraid to let their children engage in physical play or use tools such as scissors. Today’s children spend less time outside, where they have more opportunities to explore how their bodies move through space, learn balance and figure out how to handle tools and toys in relation to one another. Playgrounds have changed tremendously over the years. The equipment that supported sensory integration, such as merry go rounds and monkey bars, are no longer present. 
  3. Technology. The “educational” tablet has replaced the activities which support fine motor skills such as playdoh and coloring. 

Montessori Children’s House classrooms offer ample opportunities for fine and gross motor development. With the absence of technology in our programs, the children are free to work towards developing their hands and bodies and in turn their minds for the academic work to come. Many people are surprised to learn that fine motor skills are a robust predictor of academic achievement. Read more about that here.

-Kari