For children from birth through six, the importance of building the brain-body link is paramount. This link is developed through age-appropriate activities.
How do you identify your child’s developmental stage? Your child will show you!
Ignore everything you see for sale online (no, there are no month-by-month or “three month” developmental stages, those are a marketing artifice to sell you boxes of products).
Here is what you do:
Until your child can walk, they are driven to move their bodies. You MUST free them from restrictive clothing and place them on the floor to move. Do not wiggle objects in front of them to try to get them to look at things.
Observe your child to see what attracts and holds their attention. If they want to crawl, walk, or run, then clear more floor space in the house, especially in their bedrooms.
Observe your child to see what objects appeal to them. A stainless-steel bowl in the kitchen? Give it to them. Perhaps put one in their bedroom.
Observe your child to see what activities capture their attention. Pouring water? Folding laundry? Stacking objects? Moving heavy things around the house? Playing in the mud? Make sure all these activities can happen.
In our albums, all the Practical Life and movement activities can be done at any time. Observe your child to see which activities interest them the most.
Do not try to steer your child to an activity that does not interest them. Remember that the activity that suit’s your child’s developmental stage is the one that DOES capture their attention.
Do not interrupt or interfere with your child’s chosen activity. It doesn’t matter if they are putting shoe polish on the inside of their shoes! As long as there is no real danger, never interrupt a child who is concentrating. This is a common adult mistake.
Oh, speaking of boxes of products, those “silicone toys” are not pure silicone, nor are they safe. Medical silicone: Mucus-colored, easily deformable silicone. If it is not mucus-colored, it has chemical dyes. If it is shiny, it has some endocrine-disrupting material in it. Many children’s “silicone” toys contain PVC, which is so dangerous that it was outlawed from drinking water pipes ages ago.
Back to the original topic! Even the most mundane, simple outdoor activities have tremendous educational and developmental value. A day spent scooping sand on the beach, splashing in the water, or playing in the mud helps your child’s overall development much more than a passive activity!
Homeschooling
So much of this is just children left to be children, with some guidance. If you constrain them they learn that is the proper behavior, to be constrained. If berate them for trying something different they will learn that proper behavior is to only do what other people are already doing. If you stop them from doing the task they are interested in and push them to do a different task they will learn that it is better to wait until someone else tells them what to do. They will do that in school, they will do that at work, and they will be that way with their own children when they are adults. And they will not know how to do things without someone else telling them.