Sammi has long been fascinated with stickers. I love it when places like banks, the grocery store or the doctor’s office offer children stickers instead of suckers. Sammi thinks it’s a great treat to get a sticker from someone. And I love that she’s not being offered more sugar. Sugar is not the only treat! There’s some residual Halloween-candy-consumption-control irritation here. Please forgive!

Elli has recently discovered stickers. In one day she went from oblivious to their existence to acknowledgment, ability to remove the sticker from the page, and ability to place the sticker on a piece of paper. She made a beautiful collage of Sesame Street stickers. She was so intrigued by the experience that she focused on making her picture for about a half an hour. Pretty good for a 13 month old!

Sammi got in on the fun and enjoyed handing stickers to Elli. That presented a new challenge in how to get the sticker from Sammi’s finger and then manipulate it so she could get it to stick to her paper. She loved it. This was great practice in fine motor skill and teamwork. I really appreciate when the girls can share their interest in a common activity instead of fighting over who gets to do it. They did a good job of playing together on this one.

Stickers are a great thing to have on hand to distract and entertain your little ones.

Fine Motor Skills

Elli had fun learning how to control her finger and thumb to get them to work together. She needed this skill to remove the sticker from the page and then change how she was holding it so she could make the sticker stick to the new paper.

I love the term handedness. It conjures all sorts of ideas in my head: to be with a hand; to have things handed to you; the image of lefties writing; cute, chubby baby hands handling objects.

Handedness is defined as the preference for the use of one hand over the other. Here are some interesting facts about handedness in little ones:

• for infants under 1, only about 30-50 % show a preference for the right hand in reaching for objects
• for infants under 1, 10-30 % show a preference for the left hand
• for infants under 1, the remaining show no preference
• the preferred hand may change as they get older
• more permanent hand preferences in infants don’t occur until the second year of life

Sammi showed an early preference for her left hand. We were certain she would be left-handed. Then shortly after her first birthday she started using her right hand more. We thought maybe she would be right handed after all. But now that she is more independent and opinionated (meaning she doesn’t have to exactly imitate us anymore) she has shifted back to a preference for her left hand. She fairly consistently eats with her left hand (she owns left-handed trainer chopsticks, so cute!), draws and writes with her left hand and throws a ball with her left hand. It will be interesting to work with her on writing since I’m not left-handed.

One thing we do that unknowingly influences handedness in our little ones is handing toys or other objects to a specific side of their body (always handing a spoon to the right hand). We can remove this influence (it’s not crucial to, but just for fun to observe their handedness) is to always hand objects to the middle of the body. When Sammi started preferring her right hand, I got in the habit of handing everything to the middle so she could choose and because I didn’t know what hand it would be this time. I think this also shows acceptance of whatever hand they use, especially if it is a different hand from you.

Does your little one have a hand preference?
Cute, chubby baby hands picture courtesy of Lottie Lou Design.

One day you have a newborn who lays calmly in your arms, smiling contentedly as you go about your business. The next day, however, your baby has turned into an active, curious baby constantly looking for something to grab onto. This is one of my favorite transitions in early childhood because once babies realize they can control their environment, they begin to interact with the things around them.

Sometime between 3-4 months babies begin to show interest in objects other than faces. They look more intently at new objects discovering every detail. They may even begin to reach out toward objects. By 6 months babies usually have mastered holding and turning an object in their hand.

Here comes another of my favorite transitions: Babies then begin to realize they have two hands and can thus hold two objects. During this period I like to play my favorite game. Elli and I have entertained ourselves for quite some time with this engaging game.

I sit on the floor facing Elli with three blocks. I hand her a block; she grabs it in one hand. I hand her the second block; she grabs it in her other hand. I hand her the third block; she drops a block and grabs the third block in the now empty hand. I pick up the recently released block and offer it again. Elli again drops a block to grab the newly offered block. I pick up the discarded block and hand it to her again. She again drops a block and grabs the new block.

You get the picture. This goes on for a very long time! It’s so cute to see how excited she is each time a “new” block is handed to her. She is so excited to grab it that she forgets completely about the block she already has in her hand.

If your baby is in this adorable stage, act quickly with this game. Sooner than you think babies wise up and attempt to hold all three blocks at once.

A shape sorter, to me, represents childhood. It’s one of the earliest toys I remember playing with. I like them because they bring together cognitive development as well as motor development. It takes brain power to match the shape with its hole and it takes motor skills to actually put the shape through the hole.

Shape sorters help little ones work on gross and fine motor skills. Picking up the shape and moving it to the sorter requires gross motor skills to move the whole are. Then, once the shape is at its hole, your little one must then rotate and manipulate the shape to get it to fit just right through the hole. This takes fine motor skills.

I feel strongly that every little one should have access to a shape sorter! There are so many companies producing a variety or styles of shape sorters so you’re bound to find soemthing in your budget! Check out these shape sorters on Amazon.com.

Piggy Banks are a great activity for developing fine motor skills. Holding small coins requires the fingers to work together with the thumb. After about 9 months of age children have usually developed the ability to grasp an object between their pointer finger and their thumb. This is called the pincer grasp. Once a child has developed this, putting coins in a piggy bank is a great way to fine tune this fine motor skill.

A baby and coins? What a terrible combination, you say! Fortunately I have a solution. My husband is fascinated with pigs: stuffed animals, pictures, figurines; you name it, he’s probably got one! So at a baby shower for our first, a friend of mine introduced us to this incredible Fisher-Price Laugh and Learn Learning Piggy Bank. It has settings for Learning Time and Music Time. Within hours of my daughter figuring this toy out we had all the songs memorized and we still sing them to this day! This post isn’t meant to be a review of this particular toy, but it is one of my favorites and I could go on all day. But I’ll stop now because it speaks for itself. So the coins are large and plastic and not a choking hazard, so it’s great for little hands and mouths.

As our daughter grew, we introduced her to her own piggy bank that was collecting real money. She loved to shake it, then to dump it out and eventually to put the coins in herself. We have passed many happy hours dumping coins out and putting them back in. I was just amazed to see her dexterity in not only holding the coin but in turning it just right to drop it in the little slot.

Before you right this off as not relevant for daily life, there are advantages to such a skill. It takes fine motor control to hold a utensil and use it to pick food up off a plate and successfully guide it into your mouth. Putting coins in a piggy bank is a fun, playful way for your little ones to practice that skill and develop the dexterity necessary to actually maneuver food their mouths. Now isn’t that useful!