What are Motor and Cognitive Skills?

Motor Skills:

Motor skills are functions, which involve precise movements of muscles with the intent to perform a specific act. Or, they are motions carried out when the brain, nervous system and muscles work together.

There are two kinds of motor skills: Fine motor skills and Gross motor skills.

Fine motor skills are small movements such as grabbing something with your thumb and forefinger – that use small muscles of the fingers, toes, wrists, lips and tongue.

Gross motor skills are bigger movements such as running and jumping that use large muscles in the arms, legs, torso and feet.

A movement requires the ability to feel or sense what one’s muscles are doing as they perform the act. And when a child lacks the ability to move in a way he originally intended, motor difficulties occur. This has a negative effect on a child’s performance in school. 

As you know it’s our brain that controls all our physical movements. But a newborn baby’s brain is not mature enough to control his movements. Development starts in his head and then moves down his body. In the beginning, babies can control their mouths, faces, lips and tongues; the rest follows in time.

Touch and manipulation teach a lot. This is where fine motor skills come into play. They, however, develop only through practice: as small muscles repeat motions over and again, those muscles remember the movement and the movements become spontaneous. Learning to play a musical instrument is a fine example to demonstrate this. In the beginning you go about it slowly, looking at your notes, and observing the movements of your hands. But as you practice regularly, you start playing easily. Your hand-movements become spontaneous. It’s as if your muscles have a memory of their own. Well, it is indeed called muscle memory.

Agreed we live in the digital world. But it’s still important to be able to manipulate a pencil or a pen with ease. Your child needs to have strong fine motor skills to hold a pencil correctly and to move it in all the ways to draw letters and shapes with precision.

Whether it is playing a musical instrument or a video game, fine motor skills are always at play. Even getting dressed, manipulating buttons and zippers requires strong fingers. Imagine the pressure those little fingers have to take. And this is precisely the reason to help your children develop strong motor skills.

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Cognitive Skills:

            

 There is a huge difference between cognitive and academic skills. Cognitive skills are the mental tools needed to process and learn what is taught in an academic environment. Your cognitive skills must function well for you to read, think, prioritize, understand, plan, remember and solve problems easily and effectively.

It’s not what you know, but how well you process the information you have received. Cognitive skills are the processors of this incoming information.

To put it in a simple manner, cognitive skills are the learning skills used to:

i)        Attain and retain information,

ii)      Process, analyze, and store facts and feelings

iii)    Create mental pictures, read words, and understand concepts.

Two important processing skills come under cognitive skills: Auditory Processing and Visual Processing.

Auditory Processing: The ability to analyze, blend, and segment sounds. Auditory processing is a crucial underlying skill for reading and spelling success. It is the most important skill needed to learn to read. Weakness in any of the auditory processing skills will greatly hinder academic learning – mainly reading, fluency, and comprehension. Students with auditory processing weakness tend to lose motivation to read.  

       Visual Processing: The ability to perceive, analyze, and think in visual images. This includes visualization, which is the ability to create a picture in your mind when you hear words and concepts. Students that have problems with visual processing may have difficulty following instructions, reading maps, doing word math problems, etc.

Hence it’s highly important for a child to have cognitive skills to fare well in academics.

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Salient Features of iStoryTree

‘If you want your child to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.’ ~ Albert Eisntein

‘If you want your child to be more intelligent, along with being creative and imaginative, buy iStoryTree.’ ~ TechTree IT Systems Pvt. Ltd.

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Ideas gain importance and become great only when they are manifested into the real world. Without the process of implementation, they would remain mere fluff.

Some great ideas, however, do get implemented at any cost. And iStoryTree is a live example.

With loads of surprises and fun activities that teach and entertain your child at the same time, iStoryTree is filled with artistic illustrations of the highest quality. Introducing for the first time a perfect educational and activity picture book app that develops your child’s Motor Skills, Cognitive Skills and language skills in a very simple way!

Designed to keep your little angel’s curiosity ignited, starting with the story Crab and Crane, iStoryTree makes sure your child laughs, while he/she learns.

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Salient features of iStoryTree:

1.      Delightful animations and marvelous sound effects:

The picturesque background, against which the story is set, has a language of its own: Authenticity.

Mind-blowing animations will immerse your child into the stories. With their unique physicality and sounds, characters look believable. Every twitch on the character’s face is visible; and every non-living thing veritable.

Every character’s sound is unique; and artists at TechTree IT have made it possible for you to notice that uniqueness. The chirping of birds, the plop that comes when fish dive into the water…

The visuals, when accompanied by proper sound and music, create more impact than any known medium. We, at TechTree IT, understand this well. And iStoryTree is the proof.

2.      Eloquent Narration:

In any story, narration plays an important role. How well someone tells a story makes all the difference. iStoryTree’s ‘Read to Me’ feature does just that: it tells the story in the most exquisite way possible. A pleasing voice, coupled with delightful animations, immerses your child in the story like never before. Each word is carefully enunciated, as the word is highlighted, so that your child can focus and understand easily.

You want to attend the door and stop the narration for a while? Well, you have an option to stop the narrative midway, and continue later on, at your convenience. Or play the page again from the beginning. And once a page is complete, just ask your child to tap on the characters, the background and the objects, and enjoy the expressions on your darling’s face: everything that is tapped will come to life with funny sounds and animations. The chirpy birds take flight, the fish fly and dive back in, the frog jumps, the clouds float, the grass sways, and the main characters of the story even tell their names.

Needless to say, your child learns to pronounce words properly. Reading skills are automatically improved. And as you must already know, the first thing to know about reading is how to read with commas and periods. Finally, it goes without saying that with marvelous visuals and sound effects, and a pleasing voice, your child’s listening skills are improved beyond means.

Reading and listening skills are two of the most important cognitive skills.

3.      Read by yourself:

Want to read by yourself? iStoryTree’s ‘I wanna Read’ feature lets you read by yourself, spelling out each word at a slow and a steady pace.

Tap on a word to know how to pronounce it properly; also learn to spell it. And if you want to know the meaning of a difficult word, just press and hold the word for one second and see the meaning popping out, with the word’s part-of-speech. Along with the meaning, the inbuilt dictionary also gives an example on how to use the word effectively in a sentence.

Want to go away for a few minutes, maybe to prepare hot chocolate for your child? Just hand over your iPad to your little angel before you go. It might amaze you to know that your child develops motor skills along with pronunciation skills when he starts using his fingers to tap the screen.

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Before we go any further, let’s understand what motor skills are:

Motor skills are functions, which involve precise movements of muscles with the intent to perform a specific act. Or, they are motions carried out when the brain, nervous system and muscles work together.

There are two kinds of motor skills: Fine motor skills and Gross motor skills.

Fine motor skills are small movements such as grabbing something with your thumb and forefinger.

Gross motor skills are bigger movements like jumping and running.

It is extremely important for a child to have these skills to perform well in academics, or in any other field. And iStoryTree helps a child acquire these skills easily.

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4.      It’s play time:

Now that storytelling is over, what next, you must be wondering. Well, it’s time for some fun. iStoryTree comes up with a unique feature that allows children to play as they learn.

Catch Them All teaches children how to count. Fish fly out of water, only to dive back in. You have to catch (tap) the fish when they are above water. Every time you tap a fish, your score is appended at the top. You have a minute to play the game.

This game not only teaches children how to count, but mainly it develops concentration. Their muscle memory increases when they use their little fingers to tap the fish with precision. In short, their fine motor skills develop.

Fill Me Up is a spelling test. When a word with a missing letter of the English alphabet appears on the screen, you have to guess the missing letter. Words keep coming up for a minute.

As children enjoy this game, they not only learn to spell the words, but also their cognitive skills develop. 

5.      Bring out the artist in your child:

Story time is over, games are over. So now what? How about some painting that brings out the artist in your child?! Sounds fun? It is.

iStoryTree’s Gallery has a unique feature: Finger-painting.

The gallery allows you to choose one of the eleven artworks. Upon choosing an artwork, select colors from the color palette, and various brushes provided at the right, and start painting! Not satisfied with your art? No problem. Perfection takes time. For the time being, choose an eraser and do away with the unsatisfactory part of your painting. Want to delete the whole thing? You can do that, too. And once you are done with your painting, you can save it on your iPad and share it on Facebook.

With this amazing feature you can also make greeting cards and send it to your friends and family. Once the painting is done, choose a predefined word from the given list (Happy B’day, Get Well Soon, All the Best, Happy Anniversary, etc), and paste it on your canvas. You can also stick stamps on your card (characters from the story).

That is not all. You can also select pictures from your iPad gallery, or click your own pictures using the camera, and paste them in the frame you have selected. Improve upon it, or distort it for fun.

It goes without saying that your child’s fine motor skills will be developed beyond means.

6.      Colors and Magic:

            

             One more activity that develops your child’s motor skills!

If activities like Catch Them All develop fine motor skills in children, Magic Colors develop gross motor skills. Children tend to become couch potatoes once in a while. It is then time to hand over your iPad to them, so that they can start dancing and coloring at the same time in a rhythmic fashion.

Choose your favorite outlined artwork from the story, hold the iPad in your hands and start moving and shaking. The magic colors magically start filling up the outlined artwork. And voila! Your child has become active again.

Once your artwork is complete, you can share the magic with your friends and relatives on Facebook.

7.      Narrate the story in your voice:

Is your child fed up of listening to prerecorded voice? Or are you traveling somewhere and want your child to feel your presence? Well, you are just a tap away.

iStoryTree comes with this beautiful feature where you can record the story in your voice and see the surprise in your child’s eyes. Scroll through the pages from the story, read the story in your voice, record it, and save it. The next time you want to show off your narrative skills, or if you want your child to listen to the story narrated by you, just select the saved file and play it.

There is also a sample voice of the voice artist for your reference.

If your child is old enough to read the story, ask him to record it in his voice. Further when you listen to the narrative, you can spot your child’s mistakes in pronunciation and improve upon it.

This exercise will develop your child’s reading skills in the best way possible: for there is a huge difference between telling your child of his mistakes, and making him realize his mistakes on his own.

8.      Dictionary:

Use the dictionary to learn the meanings of all the important words from the story. Along with the meaning, it also gives a sample sentence, teaching your child how to use the word effectively.

9.      Avatar Jennie:

Calling Jennie the star of iStoryTree wouldn’t be an overstatement: for 8-year-old Jennie tells the whole story with her unique expressions and hand-gestures, your child will learn elocution skills in a very easy way.

Language skills are acquired without any hassles: sequencing of sentences and words, comprehension, pronunciation, narrative skills, and ability to recall – everything automatically improves as your child listens to funny Jennie.

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Spanish philosopher and novelist George Santayana wasn’t wrong when he said, ‘A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.’

To fare well in this competitive world – learning values, developing language and developing the right attitude are as important as academic learning. iStoryTree does exactly that: it helps your child develop those life skills in a beautiful way. At the same time, it ensures your child giggles and laughs. After all, we believe in heaven; and heaven happens when a child giggles!

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