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Toys for Skill Development - Motor Skills

What are Motor Skills?

Motor skills relate to the coordination of different muscle groups and types and can be broken into two types – gross and fine.

Motor Skills – Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills concern large muscle movements like the muscles used to help the head lift up. Gross motor skills relate to arms, body and legs. The more they are used and built up, the better they will become.

Toys that encourage your child to run, jump, throw, move and kick will help develop the gross motor skills your child is going to need in life.

Motor Skills – Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills relate to more intricate movements like an infant reaching out to grasp an interesting object with his fingers or gently tugging mummy's hair and pulling the cat's tail.

Fine motor skills are related to skills that baby will need to master as he grows up like holding a pen or pencil, eating using utensils, brushing his teeth or even using a computer keyboard and mouse.

How Do Babies Develop Motor Skills?

Baby will gain control over his neck muscles earlier than his body muscles strengthen in his torso. Baby's arms will also strengthen before the muscles in his hands and the muscles in his legs will develop faster than those in the feet.

So initially,a baby will lie flat as his body begins the job of strengthening his neck muscles. He will probably look to the right side first before he looks up above. With developmental understanding mummy and daddy can think cleverly about what kind of toys will be best suited to which stage of development.

One of the first things baby does is to reach out and grab hold of something. The pincer grip gets stronger and stronger as the muscles used to carry out this action get fine tuned.

So think about all the things that baby is going to need to learn in order to operate in the world and think about having a few bits and pieces around the house to encourage baby to practice these skills.

You can find out more about the types of toy that you can buy online to help your baby to develop his motor skills in our Toys for Motor Skill Development section.

To find out more about what to look out for when choosing and buying nursery toys visit our How to Choose and Buy a Baby Toy for Different Ages section and our Brands section.

To find out more about the different types of nursery toy that are available for each age group visit our Types of Nursery Toy section.

To find out more about the different online baby and nursery toy shops and stores visit our Top Sites section.

You can also find out more in our How to Play with Baby section.