WePlaySmart Brain Development  

Allow us to ask you a few questions back; do you know the different areas that need to be stimulated and which will eventually be tested to see whether your child is school ready? Do you know how to practically do it? Do you know how to do it in a balanced way, without neglecting some of the areas? (We can often testify to the latter ourselves: some of us suffered with maths, others did really not like reading, while others always wished they were better at sport)? Times have changed from when you as a parent grew up. The demands of our education system and competition as well as entry levels into the world of study and work are much different. Parents need to consciously and deliberately provide opportunities for their children to develop all the skills needed for school readiness. These skills are interdependent. When you improve one function of the brain you improve all functions of the brain to some degree, e.g. a child with more mobility will move around and see and learn more. Unluckily the opposite is also true: weakness in one area will negatively affect other areas, e.g. a blind child cannot run as well as the sighted child. Parents are often at a loss to know how to prevent this from happening and to ensure that all milestones are reached at their child’s best level and in the correct sequence. By using our step-by-step program from early on, we believe you will become conscious of and it will become a natural thing to you, to focus on the different areas in a balanced manner, for the rest of your baby’s childhood. Stimulating your baby this way with loads of love, will be the single most important thing that you will ever do with your live. You will be able to play smart and give your baby a kick-start!

New-borns can see from birth, just not as clearly as an older child or adult. Until your child is about six months of age, he will respond best to bold, contrasting colours and graphics. That’s why it’s important to provide your baby with toys or stimulation material that are the visual extremes of black, white and red. These high-contrast colours will captivate and hold baby’s attention, encouraging visual development as well as physical activity – like grabbing, wiggling, kicking, and arm waving. Babies love the high contrast colours!

Most of the brain’s cells are formed before birth, but most of the connections among the cells are made during infancy and early childhood. The more a brain cell is used, the better it functions by forming more connections and a thicker outer sheath. From birth the brain is rapidly creating synaptic connections. It is estimated that by 3 years of age, it has already formed about 1000 trillion connections. When connections or synapses are fired repeatedly it become stronger and more permanent. If not used at all, or not often enough the connections are unlikely to survive. In this way brain development is truly a “use it or lose it” process. A child who is not well stimulated will therefore have difficulty mastering the skills later on (UNICEF, CHIP reportno8, 2002). Yanghee Lee, Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, noted that about 80% of the human brain is already developed by the age of 5. This is why Dr Nicholas Alipui called the first 3 years of a child’s life not only a critical window of opportunity, but a golden one. UNICEF Executive Director, Anthony Blake noted that the earliest moments of childhood are the most critical for achieving sustainable, equitable development: “so much depends on those moments and months, it is up to all of us…to make the most of them” (UNICEF House, New York, 14 October 2010). This is why all of us at WePlaySmart take those first year’s moments very seriously and want to change each precious moment you have available for your child, into a golden window of opportunity…for your baby’s kick start!