Balance Buddies

By manipulating pieces and fitting them together, children improve their dexterity, which prepares them to perform actions requiring more precise movements. A variety of activities help develop dexterity. Threading, drawing, cutting and manipulating various modelling clays gradually helps acquire the skills needed to master everyday gestures such as buttoning, lacing and zipping up and prepares children for writing. Preschoolers who do these types of activities will find it easier to trace letters.

Concentration is the ability to focus attention on a single subject. Whether with work, reading or play, the process is always the same, and it is essential for learning. However, the ability to concentrate varies greatly depending on age and neurological development. Play is a natural ally of concentration. Anyone who has observed a child playing can attest to this. Many things can stimulate concentration. First, it is important to provide the child with a favourable learning environment: limit noise, have adequate physical and material organization, and fit the task duration as well as the challenge level to the child's abilities. Encouraging the child to follow a path with their finger, closing their eyes so that they listen to sounds, and reminding them of some of the characteristics of the task are strategies that help develop concentration. Finally, asking the child what they did to complete a task allows them to apply their strategies in other contexts.

Logical thinking develops as children interact with their environment. Initially, they develop their reasoning through observations, comparisons and classifications of objects to then establish what distinguishes them or what unites them. Several activities require logical reasoning: solving a 3-D puzzle, doing a scientific experiment, building a model using instructions or playing chess. All of these activities require reflection and concentration and even call upon the ability to develop hypotheses and deductions in order to develop strategies. Exercising reasoning promotes the development of the ability to solve all problems.

Space and time are at the heart of children's daily activities: drawing, writing, moving a piece on a game board, putting together a puzzle or building a building, as well as identifying landmarks to get from one point to another. All of these call for spatial organization and orientation. Furthermore, telling a story, correctly ordering a sequence of events, learning the time, and carrying out an activity in a set amount of time all call for temporal organization and orientation. All of these concepts are gradually developed through various motor and cognitive skills. This is easily observed in the development of children's language when they use the words inside, outside, next to, behind, before, after, yesterday and tomorrow. In short, skills related to spatial and temporal organization impact several areas of children's development.