I’m going to introduce you to a very simple tool that we can use to nurture our child’s physical development. Look in your kitchen cabinets and see if you can find any small spoons? I’m sure everyone of us have different type of spoons that can be held easily by a child. I believe some of you will be surprise that how possibly a spoon can be use as a nurturing tool!
Is it important to nurture a child’s physical development? Yes, it is! Bear in mind that the earlier we nurture our child’s physical development, he develops better control of his fine motor skills and body coordination. Materials needed in this activity :
- 1 spoon
- 2 small bowls
- some pasta
- tray
Please be reminded that all materials must be in child size. Display all the materials on a tray. Since this is the first article I’m sharing on a child’s overall development, so I’ll be describing in detail and you will surprise that one simple activity can bring so many benefits to your child. Also, you’ll find that all aspects/areas of development are overlapping or inter-related.
- Introduce your child to the name of the activity - Transferring pasta with a spoon. This is a way to nurture your child’s language development by adding new vocabularies (e.g. transfer, spoon) as well as forming short phrases or sentences.
- Hold the spoon with combination of three fingers - thumb, index finger and middle finger. This is very important because you are training your child’s pincer grips in pencil handling and writing in the future.
- Use the spoon to scoop some pasta from a bowl. Transfer the pasta to the empty bowl. This simple movement might seem very easy to you, but it will be challenging to younger children (less than 3 years old) because the movement involves the coordination of their hand and eyes. If spillage of pasta happens, this means that the child’s hand-eye coordination or spoon handling still needs lots of practice.
See, how long do you need to prepare the materials? Maybe just less than 5 minutes. How much does the materials cost you? Very Very low cost! Use this activity as one of your child’s daily play activities. Put the materials on a tray and display on a shelf that can be excessed by your child easily. Change the type of spoon or objects in the bowl from time to time to make the activity looks different, but the principles applied are the same. When your child spends time working on it and repeating his movements, he is developing his concentration which lead to self-discipline and patient.
Don’t stick to your child, let him make mistakes, it’s alright to spill pasta from the spoon while transferring. Let your child discover why there is spillage and how to avoid the spillage from happening again. He will repeat his movements again and again because he is searching for answer. In other words, he is thinking of solution or developing his intellect. Once he discovers the right movement and succeed, it will boost his confident and self-esteem. Therefore, you are nurturing your child’s emotional development. Just watch him from time to time and observe his progress.
Remember that nurturing a child’s needs lots of patience and love. Don’t expect your child to be able to perform the activity perfectly right away. Repetition enables your child to refine his motor control as well as develop his intellectual. Observes his spoon handling and spillage of objects from the spoon when he performs the transferring act. Show him the right way of holding a spoon if you find your child still hold it wrongly. Just guide him patiently, but don’t force him!
