It’s all Child’s Play Magic Fingers...
Feature by Sue Gascoyne of Play-Z Ltd
A typical morning starts with getting washed, dressed, eating breakfast and, in our house at least, reluctantly brushing of teeth. But how often do you think about any of these everyday actions and more to the point what’s involved in getting the 27 bones, 37 muscles and numerous tendons in each hand to perform such complex and often taken for granted tasks?
Take an apparently simple action like picking up a glass of water and you will discover just how many processes actions are required to quench your thirst. What seems like an isolated action actually involves many different parts of the body and brain and a complex sequence of events. In fact we owe much of what makes us humans to our hands and opposable thumbs and the fine manipulative control and strength that these afford. Our ability to wield tools, carry out detailed tasks and certainly text and engage in social media, rest upon the agility of our nimble fingers.
If you watch a baby or young child playing you will gain a window into the sophisticated workings of the body and brain. Labelled as fine motor skills, children’s finger and hand movements are often linked to the crucial milestone of writing. But watching babies and young children exploring and playing with
28
objects reveals an array of finger and hand movements as well as a compulsion to put everything in the mouth! It is by touching objects in this way that young children discover about the world around them, laying the foundations for lifelong learning, language and scientific discovery.
My interest in children’s hands was sparked following years of research into children’s sensory exploration and play with Treasure Baskets, collections of unusual sensory- rich objects. The wealth of different finger movements evident and fact that a simple woven coaster could
captivate a child’s
interest for nearly an hour, suggested to me that there was far more to children’s fingers and hands than meets the eye. Thanks to developments
in neuroscience
we now know this to be true. Anatomically, a disproportionate part of the human brain is dedicated to processing sensory feedback from our fingers, hands and mouth. In fact as adults we subconsciously use a series of hand positions to discover information about the shape and feel of objects. We also recognise the crucial links between the body and brain and children’s fundamental need to move in order to establish these links.
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