Early Childhood Development (ECD) is a holistic approach for child’s brain development. Since science confirms that majority of the brain development already takes place until the child is five years old. It is thus essential that we provide an enabling environment that fosters learning and development of child.
Animals Hands Play
Animal hands play is an interactive DIY activity for children from 6 month onwards. Take a hand glove, some pictures of animals and velcro. Stick one half of velcro on animal’s picture and the other half on gloves using a tough glue. Let it dry for some time. Finally enjoy the hand play in the following way:
- Show the animals to the child and keep moving fingers as if encouraging the child to pull the animals. The pulling of animals help in the development of fine motor skills which will later help in writing and daily life tasks. At later stages, you can ask child to stick it back to the gloves after pulling them out.
- Bring the gloves up, down, right and left. Let the child’s hand follow you as you move your hand in different directions. This helps in eye and mind coordination.
- Play ‘peek a boo’ game using different tunes such as “where is thumbkin” or “where is mummy”. Hide your hand (with animals) at your back or close the fingers(with animals) into your palm. This helps in developing rhythmic sense as well as object permanence (objects still exist even if you cant see them) in young children.
- Give the names of animals and talk about the characteristics (sound, home, food, habitat). This will help in vocabulary enrichment and developing curiosity about the world around us.
- For children above one year, you can prepare two (mama glove and baby glove) gloves. In this way you can involve child in matching the animals on mama finger and baby finger and also encouraging them to explore animal gloves in different ways.
Engaging child in play helps in the brain development and flourishes the bond between parent and child. Parents can also encourage children for independent play where child explores the environment/ learning materials on their own. Independent play and peer play both leads to brain development and emotional regulation in children.
