Children grow and develop rapidly in the first five years, also the Adaptivity is more during this period. There are four major areas of development, motor, physical, communication & language development.

Here in this article, let us understand the importance of developing motor & verbal skills in your child, also how can we help our children to develop their motor & verbal skills.

First, let’s understand what are motor & verbal skills.

What are motor skills?

Motor development is developing your child’s physical activities, it takes the help of your child’s brain and muscles to develop such skills. While developing their motor skills your child experiences several things. 

This helps your child to enable the movements required for daily activities such as having food or moving from one place to another. There are two types of motor skills, Fine Motors Skills, and Gross Motor Skills.

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills activities involve manual dexterity and often require coordinating movements of hands and eyes with the help of eyes. This is known as hand-eye coordination.

Below mentioned are examples of fine motor skills that occur at different stages of your child’s growth:

• Birth to 3rd Months

• Using Arms to swing at objects.
• Move hands and brings them towards their mouth.

• 3 Months to 6 Months

• Transfers objects from one hand to another hand.
• Hold hands together.
• Reaches for objects using hands.

• 9 Months to 12 Months

• Puts objects in any container.
• Turns pages of newspaper or books.
• Tries to have food on their own.

• 1 Year to 1/1/2  Years

• Builds blocks.
• Claps
• Scribbles with crayons

• 1/1/2 Years to 2 Years

• Tries to write using crayons.
• Turns pages correctly.

• 2 Years

• Washes hands.
• Turns doorknobs.
• Plays with clay dough.

• 3 Years

• Folds papers.
• Recognizes basic shapes.

• 4 Years

• Gets dressed by themselves.
• Uses spoon properly.

• 5 Years

• Cut shapes.
• Holds pencil correctly.
• Tie shoelaces.

Gross Motor Skills

In Gross Motor Skills the large muscles are involved in an energetic and broader way of fine motor activity. This includes walking, kicking, jumping, or climbing stairs, let us see a few examples of gross motor skills below:

• 6 Months to 1 Year

• Roll over.
• Crawls.
• Stands easily.
• Sits without support.

• 1 Year to 1/1/2 Years

• Climbs on furniture.
• Pulls & pushes toys with wheels.
• Jumps with both feet.
• Walk upstairs with support.

• 2 Years to 3 Years 

• Rides Tricycle using peddles.
• Runs without falling.
• Throws a ball.

• 3 Years to 4 Years

• Catches a ball with two hands.
• Changes speed and runs easily.
• Climbs upstairs using stairs easily.

• 4 Years to 5 Years

• Hops on one foot.
• Kicks the rolling ball.
• Rides, bicycle swiftly.
• Throws and holds the ball easily.

What are verbal skills?

Verbal skills include the ability to understand the language easily. This skill includes understanding grammar, multiple languages also the creative way of language used in poetry. 

Signs of Verbally Gifted Kids

• Learns to talk fluently.
• Begin reading before peers.
• Using advanced vocabulary at their age.
• Communicate the story with ease.
• Ability to learn other languages easily.
• Enjoys verbal games and puzzles.

Games that can develop your child’s verbal & motor skills

Learning is never enough, but the period of 1 to 5 years is when your child starts grasping things easily. Some interesting games can help to develop your child’s verbal & motor skills.

• Building Blocks

This is one of the basic games that evolved over the years and never faded out, even we loved to play with blocks in our childhood. This game or activity helps to build up the creativity level of your child. All you need is a set of blocks with different colors and shapes. 

• Role Play

Role Play is the games like teacher – teacher, doctor-doctor that we usually played in our childhood. Here the options are endless and also with a vast imagination level.

This is the best way to improve the creativity and imagination level of your child.

• Maze

You can create some easy hurdles for your kids, where your child will have to find a path to exit. Such games will help your child to improve their problem-solving abilities to think out of the box.

• Word Hunt

Using blocks, flashcards or alphabets you can form different words, ask your child to match the words, and create a new word. This will improvise your child’s alphabet recognition and boost memory as well.

• Simon Says

Simon says is the most creative game where you can ask your child to follow different things, such as touch their feet, tap some color, finds some color, go and get some object, etc. This will help your child to stay active and boost his memory also improve his listening and interpretation skills.

Your child is in a learning stage, do not force him to do anything that is taking time. Regular practice and your love for them will help your kids grow. Let’s make your child’s life the best phase where he enjoys learning new things.