Today I made a simple dress for Mother Gnome - my explanation for Why is not so simple, but I hope you enjoy the information and reasoning behind this little dress and it's making.
For a while I've been thinking of ideas for some simple garments for Mother Gnome Doll ~ this doll is specifically made for infants up ~ for tiny ones it is a snuggle cuddle ~ and then as the child develops, Mother Gnome and Pocket Baby offer social learning and motor development. I wanted to increase the learning value of this little dolly toy to help support children's development.
Simple clothing can extend the range of play a child can have with Mother Gnome and Pocket Baby. So today I created a little dress for MG to wear for Pretend Play:
Firstly, a child's hand-eye coordination is developing very quickly in the early years - activities to stimulate this growth are essential. Any toy that stimulates hand-eye coordination is helping to grow a child's intelligence. You might ask how or why?
Humans are born with a full quota of brain cells (neurons) but in babies they are not all connected and so cannot communicate. Neurons need to communicate for a person to be able to perform any behaviour. Neurons communicate by sending neuro-chemicals (molecules made by the brain) from neuron to neuron along neural pathways. Some neural pathways essential for our immediate survival, such as those controlling breathing, heart function and digestion, are 'hard-wired in' prior to birth, but not all neural pathways are present at birth.
Many pathways develop as we grown and learn and the more we as parents and educators can enrich a growing child's experience the more we will help them to grow an abundance of new brain connections - and thus, intelligence because they will have quicker thinking and more behavioural options available to them in their lives.
Still with me? hope so...because as parents and carers the next part is not only interesting but fun!!!
Believe it or not...Play is VERY important for children...for it is through play a child's brain grows neural connections that form neural pathways that are essential for performing all learned behaviour!
So to recap: human babies are born with many neurons that are not yet 'connected' up - a bit like a new house with all the power points and switches but no electrician has wired them together and so it is with the brain - we have all the neurons, but no connections between them. As a human brain learns, it lays down pathways between neurons.
This is so cool - our brain actually GROWS connections between brain cells and when pathways are established we can perform certain behaviour without having to think about it - for example, we are not born with the ability to use a spoon to feed ourselves. Instead, once we become aware of the concept of eating off a spoon certain neurons in our brain 'light up' you might say...but...that is not enough to be able to get food onto a spoon and into our mouth. Humans need lots of practise - every practise assists fibers to grow and connects neurons involved in using a spoon.
This applies to EVERYTHING we ever need to learn - so 'Practise makes Perfect'
What makes practise desirable so we want to do it? When it is FUN of course, and research has found that people learn faster when fun is involved in any activity! We are hard-wired for fun it seems lol
Why dress MG?
dressing and undressing dolls is an activity that young children particularly enjoy. I can only guess at the science behind that phenomenon but my intuition tells me that it has something to do with the importance of dolls to young children. Dolls are unique toys - the represent Ourselves! Humans! and with a Waldorf Doll the idea is a representation of a baby or child usually. Here the doll becomes more important than providing cuddle comfort but is a learning tool for understanding and practising social behaviour, inter and intra personal psychology and for motor skill development.
A child switches places in Pretend Play where they become the 'adult' (the decision maker) and dolly represents a version of the child - the one decisions are made about and for by others. So in pretend play, the child decides - when dolly needs to dress, sleep, go out, play, etc - you get the picture?
During this play children are practising and developing hand-eye and motor coordination - ESSENTIAL ingredients in Intelligence!!
so a dolly dress that is easy on and off is helpful for small children to extend their practise and also to extend the useful life of a snuggle cuddle like Mother Gnome and her Sweet Little Pocket Baby.
Young children are also fascinated with concepts of Big and little - Mother Gnome and Pocket Baby Doll toy set represents Big and little to the young learning child.
as an aside - this is also why younger children go for 'smaller' rather than 'larger' dolls, the child wants to explore how it feels to be BIG compared to little - they want to not only experience socially how Big people make decisions about little people, but also to practise role play in their pretend play activities and the smaller doll is an excellent prop for this type of play. A smaller doll helps the child to imagine and explore Bigger!
another idea that is associated with my creative thinking about a dress for MG is related to young children's open fascination with an aspect of pregnancy - 'mummy has a baby in her tummy' and 'baby comes out of mummy's tummy'. I wanted to give little children a way to explore this fascination that was at their level of need, so not too explicit. Just the idea of Mother Gnome has something hiding under her dress, and Why! it's a tiny baby!
Mother Gnome and Pocket Baby are designed with the infant and young child in mind. A dolly that can grow with baby. A perfect snuggle cuddle gift to a newborn that can form part of their dolly play repertoire as they grow. Dolls help children develop understanding and provide a tool to practise the social and practical world around them. It is part of a child's natural desire to learn about their world. Children around the age of 18 to 3yrs are particularly interested in exploring the idea that babies grow inside their mother. the concept of pregnancy. "mummy has a baby in her tummy" and 'dressing dolly' for hand-eye coordination in early motor development and the social skills practise needed in their futures.
So please leave a comment and let me know what you think about this, thanks!
Hi Natalie Cairncross - Congratulations!!!
