Remember the first time your daughter clapped her hands? Or your son managed to get food IN his mouth instead of all around it? You probably do – and with good reason! Milestones like this represent giant steps in your child’s development. In the case of clapping hands and eating ‘properly’, it means your child has learned to control their hand and finger movements and co-ordinate these with their sense of vision. When a child starts putting LEGO DUPLO bricks together, it shows they’ve moved to the next step of motor and cognitive development.
When your child first starts playing with LEGO DUPLO bricks, you’ll notice they’ll be able to take bricks apart long before they can put them together again. Don’t worry – learning to pull bricks apart is a major accomplishment that involves considerable understanding and skill. Eventually, though, your child will also start putting two bricks together, demonstrating that he or she has mastered a truly amazing array of both motor and cognitive skills.
What it takes to put two LEGO DUPLO bricks together
So what does putting two LEGO DUPLO bricks together say about the skills your child has mastered? Actually, quite a bit – because putting two bricks together requires a wide array of both motor and cognitive skills.
The motor skills include:
Fine motor skills, which enable your child to use the small muscles in their hands and fingers to manipulate pencils, scissors and other tools, in addition to putting bricks together.
Eye-Hand coordination, which involves using your eyes to direct those small hand and finger muscles to perform specific tasks.
The cognitive skills involved in putting two bricks together include:
Basic mathematics, which – in the case of putting bricks together – include basic quantification, size comparisons, an understanding of angles, and more.
Concentration and attention, which putting two LEGO DUPLO bricks together requires a lot of, and which children in fact learn by engaging in fun activities like playing with bricks!
Playing with bricks both demonstrates and helps build critical skills!
With all those skills in use, you can see why putting LEGO DUPLO bricks together is a pretty big deal! But there’s more to it than that. Because not only does accomplishing a task like putting bricks together demonstrate all the skills your child has acquired. It also helps your child build these critical developmental skills. This is why playing with LEGO DUPLO bricks is fun as well as a valuable developmental tool.
So when you see your child put two LEGO DUPLO bricks together for the first time, be sure to celebrate this milestone! But by all means encourage him or her to keep building – both the wacky and wonderful models children love to build, and the motor and cognitive skills that will be critical for further development.
