Child Development: Motor and Cognitive Developments

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There are many achievements that occur in areas of motor, perceptual, and cognitive development throughout the first three years of a child’s life. Early skills such as grasping and kicking develop first, and by the time they are a year old they have developed mobility skills such as rolling over and crawling. By the age of two, most children are walking and have more control over their movements. Their hand-eye coordination skills will be more developed, and by the time they are three they are able to hold small objects like a crayon. Developmental milestones usually occur in the same order, but can occur at different ages for different children.
It has been shown that motor and cognitive development stem from the child’s interaction with objects in the environment. Object manipulation progresses through three phases during the first year of life. In the first phase, from birth through three months of age, infants clutch objects tightly in their fist. In the second phase, infants display repetitive finger and hand movements called stereotypies. These stereotypies peak in frequency at six months of age. They include waving and banging objects, and passing them from hand to hand. The hand movements of this phase are carried out with just one hand, while the other hand helps maintain the infant’s sitting posture. By nine months, infants have developed the strength and control for independent sitting and the second hand can be used in object manipulation. In this phase, infants use one hand to position or operate one part of the object while they manipulate another part of the same object with the other hand. Toward the end of their first year, infants are able to perform complex hand movements that are necessary for multimodal ex...

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...n fascinated by animals and you've got an easy way into helping children produce some of their first "words."

Developmental milestones usually occur in the same order, but can occur at different ages for different children. Each system is dependent on another system. Therefore by promoting the development of one area, you are really promoting the development of all associated areas.
Smart Blocks™ are appropriate for ages 1-3 because this is a time of rapid development in these areas. It serves as a multifunctional toy because of its association to traditional toy blocks in promoting motor development, perceptual development, and hand-eye coordination. Other functions of Smart Blocks™, the pairing of animals and colors, promote problem solving and logical thinking. The sound function of Smart Blocks™ promotes language development through its use of animal sounds.

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