The Lowdown on Fine and Gross Motor Skills When Choosing Baby Toys

You've heard this term a lot, "fine motor skills", but how does it relate to babies and why is it important when choosing baby toys?  And to throw another curve-ball in there,  what's the actual difference between fine and gross motor skills? 

For starters, "fine motor skills" in babies refers to the small movements they exhibit early on.  These movements represent the beginnings of muscle coordination, as shown through small movements of the feet, toes, wrists, fingers, tongue, and lips.  The following examples fall under this umbrella:

• The holding or "clutching" of small objects, such as holding a little spoon and clutching a baby beads toy or teether.  That's why baby clutch toys typically feature large wooden rings for grasping or tactile features like bumps and large shapes to improve grasping ability.

• Discovering the coordination between thumbs and fingers to pick up objects (and before long chucking them across the room!)  Through baby toys, parents can help condition these fine motor skills with large wooden knob puzzles, stacking toys, sound rattles with large handle rings, and pint sized soft blocks for example. 

It's important to note that both fine and gross motor skills involve the development of muscle coordination, and they both grow together.  While fine motor skills in babies involve smaller movements like clutching and picking up toys, gross motor skills describe more physical movements like rolling over and sitting, and eventually more advanced large movements like crawling, walking, and running as children get older.

These motor skills continue to develop well past the toddler stage, into kindergarten, and beyond.  Gross motor skills continue to strengthen via sports and other outdoor physical activity, and mastering handwriting skills is just another continuation of fine motor skills for example.  

Developmental baby toys are designed to foster these motor skills and bring the two together early on, which also helps to improve early logical thinking!  

Pounding toys for example require large movements of the arms for pounding objects and smaller movements like picking up mallets.  And wooden Stacking, nesting, and sorting toys utilizes those smaller fine motor motor skills to improve logical reasoning like sequencing. 

To learn more about the relationship between motor skills and toys, check out our detailed online product pages, or visit our Baby & Toddler Pinterest Board for inspiration!