The Best Toys to Increase an Infant’s Motor Skills

We, as parents, often marvel at the look of concentration on our baby’s face when they are looking at colourful pictures, loud toys, or electronic gadgets. It is surprising how, without having the slightest clue as to what is happening around them, they are trying to understand it. Any moving object becomes the object of their concentration. This age of exploring new things is also the age of motor skills development.

Motor skills are an infant’s ability to make use of their muscles to reach out for things nearby. Motor skills are divided into two distinct forms -Fine motor skills and gross motor skills. Fine motor skills involve smaller actions such as the movement of fingers or toes, while gross motor skills refer to any movement that involves hands, feet, or the entire body. The activities involve crawling, sitting, running, or jumping etc.

When a baby starts to develop their motor skills there are a number of ways the process can be enhanced. One of the easiest and most effective is through play. It can be the play time of girls or the time to play of boys – they all have their own ways of playing. Their favourite toys include push and pull toys, dummy cars, nibblers etc. These toys not only entertain them, but also educate them at the same time. But before we disclose the four best toys to increase a child’s motor skills between the ages of 0 to 1, let’s take a quick look at how these motor skills are developed in this one year course.

In the first four months, the infant doesn’t try to hold or grab anything. Even if he tries, less strength is involved. By the time he turns four months old, he tries to grab an object for more than 5 seconds in his hand, like a rattle. Only the fingers are used and the rattle doesn’t last in his hand for long. By the time the baby turns -8 months old, he develops the movement to keep holding the rattle for longer by encasing it within its palms. By the time he is 9+ months, he will try to pick up objects from surfaces and hold them in his hand.

Best Toys for an Infant Boy to Develop His Motor Skills:

1. Push-pull toys. As the infant grows from a couch surfer to a walker, push and pull toys massively aid in balancing and large muscle development. The push and pull toy put a baby’s muscles to work, which is important to turn them into climbers and runners.
2. Nursery mobile. Any object that continuously dances over your baby’s head develops his attention span and stimulates his vision. The more a baby concentrates, the better their vision.
3. Ring stack. A ring stack is an all-time favourite unisex toy that consists of a big cone with multiple coloured rings on different sizes to be stacked over one another. It is easy for babies to grasp these rings, thanks to their specially-designed width. After several tries, they finally learn to stack the rings in the cone, enhancing both their problem-solving and motor skills.
4. Mirror. Not technically a toy, a mirror is one of the things babies are most fascinated with. Since they can detect the changing expressions and movement of the face in the mirror, it allows them to explore themselves, leading to self-discovery of where they are and their body parts.

This is a collaborative post.