Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Stacking


Stacking is correlated to your child's level of motor development. It allows your child to use her hands, both alone and in coordination with her eyes, developing more control and precision as she tries new ways to handle items. She also learns spatial concepts like dimensions, weight and relative positions. All this will enhance her ability to explore and learn about the world around her.

I give Rachel quite a lot of stacking opportunities so her stacking ability is excellent. The usual measure (please don't take this too seriously) is that a 15 month old can stack 2 blocks while an 18 month old should be able to stack at least 4 blocks. Rachel, at 13 months old, has already mastered stacking.


Just a few months ago, babydoll was more interested in knocking blocks down, even if I showed her just two blocks stacked on top of each other. Now, she finds great satisfaction in building the structure ... before knocking it down.

As you can see, she is very focused on her task. She will stack all the available blocks around with great concentration - I usually bring out about ten or so for her. I normally offer her blocks but she doesn't discriminate and will stack just about anything that can be stacked. She is still ambidextrous, so she stacks with either hand. I work on other motor activities as well, so babydoll is pretty confident with her hands.


If you want to give your child a stacking activity, all you have to do is demonstrate it. In the beginning, I would stack one block on top of the other and Rachel would push the blocks down. We would laugh about it and I would demonstrate it again. And she would knock it down again. Sometimes, she would even crawl away. I would leave a little pile of blocks out when we played together and she was free to play with them, or not. Then, one day, just like that, she started stacking.


Ok, that's all. Hope that gives you some inspiration to try stacking with your child!

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