Learn About Milestones
Infants are born with mostly reflexive movement. As babies grow, they begin to develop purposeful movement. This purposeful movement fosters the foundation of the musculoskeletal (strength, endurance and skeletal shape) and neuromuscular (coordination, spatial awareness and balance) systems. Each developmental milestone has a specific purpose toward achieving this foundation.
Proper motor skill development in early childhood will affect all other areas of development. It is important for your infant to develop confidence and strength in order to promote cognitive, speech, and sensory development as well as executive function (working memory, flexible thinking and self-control).
When it comes to impact on education, neuroplasticity is one of the most important and groundbreaking discoveries about the brain that we have to date. Intelligence is not fixed as we once supposed; rather, it develops and changes throughout our lives. Neuroscientists know and accept the importance of motor development and its effect on learning readiness. i.Research gives strong evidence that daily physical movement integrated into the curriculum increases academic scores.ii As educator Eric Jensen puts it, “Today’s children do not get the early motor stimulation needed for basic much less optimal school success.”iii In order to allow the brain to function normally, we must adapt to the 21st-century learner and address the physiological deficiencies that are arising in children due to limited physical movement and other detrimental hallmarks of modern society. Much like a car needs a motor, tires and gas in order to run properly, children must be physiologically put together before they can learn.i
Over the past years, the amount of time that infants spend on the floor has declined, however. They spend their time laying back in a car seat, which now can be transformed into an all too common carrying device, a grocery cart holder, or even into a stroller.i By age 2, a child has spent 500+ hours in a car seat, both in and out of a car. *Many parents and educators fail to realize how important movement is to proper early childhood neural development and subsequent academic and social skills. Let Motor Babies, LLC help!
i Ready to Learn; Candace Meyer, Minds-in-Motion, Inc. & Alexandra Beer
ii Hannaford, 1995; Michaud and Wild, 1991; Martens, 1982; Brain Rules. John Medina. 2008
iiiTeaching with the Brain in Mind. Eric Jensen. 2005
* “Critical Windows for School Readiness”, EPSF (Early Prevention of School Failure), 1995