5 reasons why you should give your child an interloper
During a child’s formative years, each toy serves an educational and developmental purpose. It provides emotional, intellectual as well as physical growth. Fine motor skills are very important for toddlers and young children. They can help to build their self-reliance, and going forward can help support their future speech development as well as learning to write.
Ideal toys that can support strengthening these skills are wooden lacing toys.
Many parents don’t realize the important role that working with hands plays for the development of their child. Touching, manipulating and pressing buttons, are presumably ordinary activities. Yet, in the phase of the most intense development of your brain, when being just a few months until three years old, the work of small hands translates into much more than manual dexterity.
Every skill connected with hand grip or eye-hand coordination creates additional neural pathways in a child’s brain. From the age of three children can introduce more complicated motor-based games into their routines, such as: interlacing, and targeting a shoelace into holes.
Why is it so important?
According to Paulina Sapoń, the author of the blog Neurony Szalają and an expert in the field of neuroeducation, one of the most important functions that each toy serves is the ability to manipulate it.
‘Manipulating objects is a fundamental element for the development of children’s brains. Nothing can replace it. The last thing you want to replace it with is a phone or smartphone’.
‘A child needs to learn about objects in a multisensory way. To touch, to rotate’. She claims that only when discovering the world in a multisensory way in a child’s brain a proper representation of objects is being created.
It sees the world in a sensory way. ‘An activity such as interlacing is especially connected with the development of thinking, understanding, and strategy of problem-solving.
Such activity enhances concentration and improves memory. The training of memory and concentration is a base for a child’s intelligence and ease of learning. When trying to fit a shoelace into a hole one needs to coordinate a lot of muscle groups. To perform this task a toddler activates its entire intellectual and physical capacity. It is an important step not only in the process of development of speech, memory, and concentration but also a step in acquiring self-reliance. As a result of this practice a sense of possessing a skill is being created’. Says Paulina Sapoń who deals daily with the role of neuroeducation in a child’s development.
Detailing the reasons why it is worth giving a young child a gift such as an interlacing toy with a shoelace, when doing so, we will take a closer look at the scientific reasoning as well as those that come from parents’ experience.
Here is our list:
1.Development of Fine Motor Skills
As mentioned above, the necessity of trying to fit a shoelace into a hole, catching a string with a firmer grip, trying to fit a string into a hole with a lot of precision –is an advanced training of fine motor skills. When trying to fit it into a little target, a child learns precise movements. They use a forefinger and thumb.
It deals with a variety of materials such as hardwood and string. Such an activity is not only a great introduction to tightening your laces, doing up your sweater, or using precise tools – interlacing can have a real influence on speech development and improve the ability to learn to write in young children.
2.Learning To Be Patient
Learning to be patient seems to be impossible in the case of little ones but it is more about encouraging children with the idea of working on tasks that are supposed to be completed. The activity of interlacing is completed when a string is used entirely. When playing a child is gradually and naturally getting used to a process that has its own beginning and end.
It is a good introduction to more advanced educational activities that appear in various phases of formal education in the first and second groups of kindergarten. Lacing toys teaches concentration and task orientation.
3.Quiet Game
The advantage of interlacing is its simplicity. They don’t generate noise. They don’t shine. They don’t overstimulate. They are in soft colors. They don’t create increased tension in a child. On the contrary, they help to quieten a toddler. As they don’t make any sound playing with them is not easily noticeable by the environment.
It makes them a great toy to hand when standing in a queue or talking on the phone. In each of those situations when we need to keep our toddlers busy and quiet. Lacing toys are a healthier, wiser option for the development of little ones, far better than a fairytale on a phone.
4.Compactness
Toys that don’t have too many elements are small and handy, they are ideal for families living an active lifestyle. Parents who like walking, using public transport, and bringing their kids along are aware of the importance of having a few attractive toys with them. Lacing toys will focus a child’s attention when traveling. They won’t be broken or lost when being out, and when dropped during a walk, for sure they won’t be missed.
5.Aesthetic
Parents who care to choose quality and aesthetic toys use wooden lacing toys. What children are surrounded with even during their first months of living is relevant and influences their aesthetic senses. It is also something we do for ourselves- unsuitable toys in children’s rooms are probably unavoidable, due to gifts received from family and friends.
Why shouldn’t we build children’s space in accordance with our aesthetic taste, which is important to us? And by doing so, why not limit colourful plastic? This for sure will show its effects in the future and will prevent children from making a glaring mess.
6. Sustainability and Security
Toys for children should be first of all safe – in the case of Milin interlacings, it is guaranteed that when they drop them they won’t break. If taken into the mouth, paint won’t hurt a child. Made of natural materials, nontoxic, and deprived of harmful formaldehyde and plastic BPA toys nowadays are a typical choice of conscious parents.
7. Imagination
Little children like to observe the world around them. A choice of the right toy can inspire an intense growth of creativity. Milin Lacing toys speak to those natural features that toddlers exhibit – therefore on one side, they refer to real animals such as a dog, cat, or hedgehog, which on the one hand evoke in a child, interest and associations which are familiar to them in reality, coming from nature – on the other hand, they have fantastic shapes of fairytale creatures, that ignite their imagination and creativity.
The way of using a lacing toys is one’s individual choice. It can encourage little ones to conduct their experiments by creating patterns such as crosses and knots. A variety of options for playing with this one toy stimulates a child’s imagination.
You can buy interleavings of the Polish brand Milin in two categories – large and mini. All of them are made of wood, the sets come with a string attached. The toys are certified by FSC®, OEKO-TEX®, CE, EN71. They are recommended for children aged 3+.
- Author of the text: Pola Madej-Lubera
- Expert, neuroeducator: Paulina Sapoń
