Fun Crossing MIdline Activities for Infant, Baby, and Toddler

 

Our last post described why crossing midline activities were beneficial for your baby's Brain development.  Here are some ideas for fun crossing midline activities for your baby at every stage.

For infants - Tracking tasks such as following an object or a moving mobile from side to side. Tracking in this manner engages the body visually in its first opportunity to cross midline from the right to the left side and back.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             For babies – crawling and side to side reaching activities, encouraged by you, such as having them hold a desired item in one hand so that they need to use the other hand to cross over and retrieve another item, are examples of midline crossing in play. Another activity that facilitates visual midline crossing is using puppets moving in different directions that encourage a delighted baby to follow with his eyes.

For toddlers –Games like patty cake, bubble popping, passing the ball around in a circle while holding the ball with two hands, rolling a toy car along a path, turning the wheel of a toy car all the way around with one hand only, and pretending to be an elephant while on all fours swinging one hand right to left like the elephant swings its trunk, are more examples of midline crossing in play.

Now that you are aware of the importance and benefit of midline crossing activities you will know what games to encourage during playtime.

CROSSING MIDLINE AND BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

Babies new experiences enhance brain development.  Each new experience creates a new connection and repetition of that experience helps influence the speed of response for that task or activity.  Of course we want to help our children respond to their environments and experiences with the greatest ease possible allowing for improved learning opportunities and success with tasks. The brain is divided into many parts, each of which is responsible for an individual action.  For example, the area of the brain know as the "Broca" area is responsible for language, the cerebellum is responsible for coordination and on and on it goes.  In truth, the brain does not work part by part but rather multiple parts of the brain are working simultaneously to complete the complex motor actions of human beings. On a larger scale the brain is divided into two parts that we call the right brain and left brain. The brain will work with greatest efficiency when the right and left sides of the brain work together easily. One very significant task that requires midline crossing, for older children, is reading and writing. In order to read and write a child must be able to work from one side of the page to the other. So yes, how we encourage our babies now will help facilitate their educational needs later. We therefore encourage our children to engage in activities that require crossing the midline and by doing so we encourage the right and left brain to work together. Cross lateral movement patterns such as the right arm moving over to the left side of the body to retrieve an item is one example of midline crossing. 

Our next post will discuss play and activities that will promote midline crossing.