Going Home - Your Baby's Development
Gross motor skills
Gross motor skills involve the use of the large muscles in the body and include walking, running, jumping, climbing and hopping.
Suggestions to enhance your baby’s gross motor development
- When your baby is comfortable on the floor, provide supervised playtime
- Encourage them to learn to move and explore on the floor
- Let your child sit unaided, crawl and cruise around furniture; a pull along toy or trolley of blocks will help
- Provide toys to ride and climb on and space to run and play
- Use climbing frames and playground activities to aid coordination, strength and fitness, e.g. swings, seesaw, slide, obstacle track
- Provide ball play for rolling, throwing, catching and kicking to develop coordination skills
- Provide play with large pillows to jump on or roll about
- Play peek-a-boo games, hide and seek
