The grasping, at first, is quite clumsy but through repetition, and across time, infants become adept at grasping and develop fine motor skills. Young infants learn to grasp an object, for instance a cube. All these movements strengthen muscles in readiness for the next stage - walking.Īs babies develop they become more adept at grasping objects. You will often see young babies in a bath reaching with their legs towards a floating toy and kicking. For example, a young baby has greater control over their leg movements than their arms. Bath toys provide opportunities to develop and use motor skills to great effect.

Sound and movement attract a baby’s attention if a toy is placed almost within reach of babies their movements become more animated. When young babies watch a mobile they are constantly moving their head, arms, legs and even their mouths in response to the movement of the toy. Many movements that young babies make are in preparation for the next stage of their development.

An infant’s growth and development in the first year of life is rapid.

Encourages fine motor skill development.

Once children begin to read their vocabulary expands enormously. Babies and children learn a lot through repetition and pick up words rapidly in this way.

For instance, young children can press a button repetitively to hear the same sound or word again. Toys that name alphabet letters and everyday words satisfy young children’s need for repetition and rehearsal when practicing words and sounds. Young children also need to practice their language skills. Social interaction is important for language development and turn-taking games are a fun and educational way for babies and young children to learn. Babies learn to take turns even before they are using words. Babies begin to learn about conversational turn-taking from an early age if a baby is babbling the adult waits for a pause and then talks to the baby. There are social skills involved in language acquisition such as realising that it is necessary to wait until the other person has finished speaking. The more babies are exposed to language the faster they will begin to pick up it up. Adults can facilitate babies’ language development by playing with them, focussing on particular toys, reading books and naming everyday objects. They are predisposed to pick up the sounds of the language that they hear around them. Babies start to babble at an early age and this can be seen as the first signs of language.Introduces the alphabet, letter sounds and vocabulary.VTech toys offer babies and children the opportunity to learn more about cause and effect by pressing buttons and listening to the sounds, moving toys around and playing educational computer games. If babies are presented with an unexpected event where, for example, a moving toy train disappears behind a screen but does not come out the other end they will stare for a long time at the screen. For example, babies are beginning to understand that toys reliably fall to the ground and that if a toy train goes into a tunnel it will come out the other end. Before children use spoken language researchers discover what young infants understand about the world by presenting them with unexpected events. VTech bath toys with their pouring and squirting features encourage cause and effect awareness.Ĭhildren demonstrate that they have understood the concept of cause and effect when they talk about the consequence of actions. Toys that reliably make a noise when pressed, pulled or touched teach babies that their actions have an effect on the world. Encouraging children to be curious about the world facilitates learning through experience. This type of learning through cause and effect continues throughout childhood. This enables the baby to continue with their experiment and learn more about cause and effect babies learn a great deal through repetition and it is good to facilitate opportunities where babies can begin to understand that, for instance, a toy will always fall to the ground. Parents will tend to pick the toy up and return it to the infant. The toy drops downwards and makes a noise as it hits the floor. A delightful example of this is when babies begin to explore gravity by dropping toys whilst sitting in their highchair. Cause and effect is a scientific concept that babies learn very early in their lives. Babies are exploring and experimenting with the world almost from the day they are born.Rewards baby as they learn that their actions have reactions.

Vtech activity cube