This feature can be photocopied for early years practitioners and parents of under-threes
Babies and toddlers learn to use their fine and gross motor skills in complementary ways to achieve what they want to do. Jennie Lindon follows their progress
It is usual to divide a child's physical development into the larger, whole body movements, like crawling or climbing, and the smaller, more detailed co-ordinations using hands and fingers. The larger movements are sometimes called 'gross motor development', and the smaller ones 'fine motor development'. Both 'sides' to physical development are equally important for under-threes. Remember that each child's pattern of development is very individual and the ages in this feature are just an approximate guide.
0-12 months
Babies are born with very limited physical control over their own bodies, but they are highly motivated to practise movements. As a result of this they steadily gain control, from their head down towards their feet, and from the midline of their body out to the ends of their limbs. Babies need to be kept safe - parents and carers should support their heads when they are young and ensure that they cannot roll or crawl themselves into danger - but otherwise they should be able to move and experience different positions.
Sound advice is to place babies on their backs to sleep. But from three to four months, babies who are awake benefit from sometimes being placed on their stomachs. In this position they can practise lifting their head and shoulders, as well as the flinging arm and leg movements that will enable them to roll over.
Between six and nine months babies gain the muscle strength and balance to sit up independently. In the second half of the first year, they develop the skills to move themselves along by crawling or bottom shuffling, or cruising along the furniture. Some will also have started to walk.
1-2 years
With plenty of practice, toddlers become confident walkers and clamberers. First, their full attention is on getting upright, moving forward - and frequently getting back up again after they have lost their balance! Toddlers become able to vary their direction and speed in movement, to tuck a book under one arm or pull along a wheeled toy.
Toddlers also use their larger movements as a form of communication, like holding up both hands to mean, 'I want a cuddle.' A full hand and finger point tells you either that they want to know the name of an item, or that they want you to look at this interesting sight.
Confident walkers use their newly developed mobility to get themselves to interesting play materials or parts of the room where they happily use their fine skills to explore. Their physical explorations show that toddlers remember and plan ahead a bit. There is also just sheer pleasure in using their ability to crawl or walk in different directions - it is just fun to move.
2-3 years
Young children show a wide range of physical skills: walking, running and climbing. Two-year-olds have usually developed a limited judgement about how fast to run or how high to climb, but children vary a great deal. They are able to handle large constructional materials like blocks and show pleasure in physical games like run-and-chase. Young children are often delighted to use their whole body movements in dance and to make the large gestures that go with some songs and rhymes.
Young children who are happily involved in the daily routines of a nursery or family home use their skills to fetch items you request, help to get out play materials and tidy up. They are also able to use large and fine movements to take on some of their own care.
At this age, children now have the confidence to deliberately play about with their physical skills. They can be real clowns, having found out that adults or older children giggle if they walk backwards, do a funny tippy-toe run or pretend to fall over.
Further resources
Earlier features in the under-threes series that describe activities to support the physical development of very young children are:
- Full stretch 4 February 1999
- Picking it up 7 October 1999
- Handy hints 3 January 2002
Activities to get them moving by Kevin Kelman and Alice Sharp
Part of a parent's or carer's role is to make sure that activities are at the appropriate level for an individual child. Each baby or toddler will develop at their own rate, so be careful that they are not under-stimulated or over-challenged.
Experimenting, exploring, creating and communicating through the activity is more important than expecting the children to achieve an end goal - for example, knocking over the tubes in 'Fun with tubing' (see right).
Bring the post
- Gather a selection of empty gift bags with patterns and colours on them.
- Save large envelopes including the padded type. Decorate the envelopes to make them more interesting for the babies and toddlers.
- Stuff the envelopes and gift bags with scrunched up newspapers and seal them with sellotape.
- Scatter the packages around the room and encourage babies and toddlers to lift the packages and bring them to you from their different locations.
- Older children may enjoy throwing and catching the light packages.
- Create a posting box from a large box. Make sure the hole is large enough for the packages to fit through.
- Offer sacks (pillowcases) for the children to transport the mail around.
Pull along containers
- Wash empty fruit juice containers with warm, soapy water and leave to dry.
- Cut open a 'lid' on the containers.
- Use a hole punch to make a hole on the seal of the container and attach a length of string or ribbon.
- Young children will enjoy placing their toys in the containers and pulling them around the room or in the garden.
- The containers can be decorated with a mixture of PVA glue and ready- mixed poster paint to make them more individual.
Bottle carriers
- Paint a bottle carrier from a supermarket and add sticky shapes or pictures to make it more child-friendly.
- Gather a range of plastic bottles - some that fit in the carrier loosely; some that are a perfect fit; and others that require a little bit of force to go in.
- Fill them with a range of materials that will interest babies and toddlers - use a variety of colours, shapes and textures and vary the weights of the contents too.
- Allow children to explore the bottles and experiment with trying to fit them in the carrier.
- Invite them to carry the carrier around the room.
Fun with tubing
- Gather a range of tubes such as poster tubes, tubes from a roll of wrapping paper, tubes of insulation for placing around pipes, transparent tubes (available from pet shops).
- Paint those that are made of cardboard and decorate them.
- Place scarves in the tubes and allow babies to pull the scarf out from the other end.
- Hold one of the tubes at a 45 degree angle and allow the children to put a ball in one end of the tube before running to the other end to catch it as it comes out.
- As an alternative, use rolled up socks, beanbags or soft balls to play 'pin bowling'. Stand the tubes in a line and encourage the children to take aim with the soft balls to try and knock over the tubes.
Feed the animals
- Make large animal faces similar to the one in the photo above. Ensure that you design the animals with large mouths that balls can fit through.
- Secure the animal faces so that they are upright.
- Give the children a range of sizes and textures of balls that they can use to 'feed' the animals.
- Attach animal faces to cardboard boxes. Display them at different heights so that the children can roll, drop or place the 'food' into their mouths.
Movement to rhymes
- Say the following rhyme to encourage movement. Add other lines of your own.
Marching, marching, one, two, three, Stopping, bending and touching your knee. Marching, marching, four, five, six, Stopping, stretching and doing some tricks!
- When using rhymes such as 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes' or 'We're going on a bear hunt', encourage the children to add physical movements, such as big and small steps, leaps, skips, rolls, jumps and runs. Try to include bending, stretching, rolling and so on to encourage movement and exercise.
