What should a busy board include and how each piece affect the fine motor skills?

Have you ever wondered how to encourage your child to develop the attitude and skills necessary for self-reliance from an early age? Independent play is the solution recommended by most child development experts.

Using busy boards and sensory walls is a popular approach to make your child`s activities entertaining and educational at the same time. These are great tools for kids from the toddler age to pre-school. Busy boards encourage concentration, independent play, and train fine motor skills that your child will need to rely on at home and in the school environment.

What Are Fine Motor Skills?

Every child has to develop fine motor skills to become independent and self-reliant while performing everyday tasks. Fine motor skills require using the muscles of the palms, fingers, and wrists. Activities associated with fine motor abilities include building with legos, tying up shoelaces, brushing teeth, pouring tea, opening or closing locks, or using scissors and pens. The last two are very important in a school environment.

Well-developed fine motor skills lead to successful task outcomes and positive self-perception in children. They influence the quality and the speed of performing a task.

While tasks like pressing buttons, tying shoes, or using a spoon seem intuitive and easy for adults, children often have a hard time mastering them. Parents and teachers place a lot of importance on the completion of such tasks. Children often refuse to do them due to a fear of failure.

Using a busy board lets children try many different activities for the first time without unnecessary stress or fear. The best way to help a child develop fine motor skills includes using various pieces of a busy board to stimulate a full range of their mental and physical abilities. Busy boards can be enjoyed by children of both sexes, as little as 6 months old. The age range between 6 months and 3 years is crucial for the development of fine motor skills.

Developing Fine Motor Skills With Individual Pieces on a Busy Board

What should a busy board include? Different elements on a busy board positively affect a range of fine motor skills. Make sure that your busy board or a sensory wall includes most of these pieces to provide your child with engaging activities. It will foster a well-rounded development of your child`s abilities.

Padlocks help your children develop hand-eye coordination skills. Lacing hoops and loops prepare little hands for writing. Closing and opening the latches train finger muscles to perform pincer grasp and precision grip. These fine motor skills are necessary for a child to perform all required preschool and school activities.

Rotating wheels and turning keys are exercises that enhance twisting motions of the wrist and fingers. Many children have underdeveloped lateral prehension skills due to a lack of practice. Busy boards and busy cubes that have interactive elements designed to train the pad-to-side grip (locks with keys, spinning reels, wheels) solve this problem.

Pressing buttons and toggling switches on and off makes individual fingers stronger. Children with well-developed finger muscles can perform power and precision grips, which allows them to hold and manipulate objects of different sizes and shapes. It`s one of the easiest activities that can be performed by toddlers.

Bolt locks, latches, slide locks, carabiners, and straps with buckles are great all-around development tools. In addition to promoting problem-solving and stimulating a child`s imagination, they force your child to use both dominant and non-dominant hands together. Sensory wall units with these elements help develop fine motor skills in both hands and let your child engage in more sophisticated play. Using these tools builds new neural pathways in the brain needed for `hard` activities like playing musical instruments or performing card tricks. It also trains a child`s hand muscles for any activity that requires high levels of precision and coordination.

Pull string and velcro straps influence lateral and vertical movement of the whole arm. When performing pull action, children learn to apply their shoulders, arms, and wrists together to perform a single `fluid` hand movement.

Horn and rubber ball squeezing, rotating the mirror, and twisting other objects on the busy board achieve two goals. These activities improve the general strength of fingers and also develop the so-called spherical grasp. They train the wrist muscle in a specific way that is similar to operating a computer mouse. A well-developed spherical grasp prevents straining the wrist in the future.

Why is it recommended so much?

Busy boards are recommended by child development experts as one of the best tools for fine motor skills training. Choose from a variety of busy boards, sensory walls, and other activity toys at the Bumblee Smart online shop. If you are not sure what sensory wall is made of, and whether those pieces will help your child develop necessary skills, don`t hesitate to ask customer support.