A child must have developed the following 10 fundamental play activities and rudimentary movement patterns well enough to be able to play and learn, as all further learning builds on these skills:
1. Take and put in/put away: Picking up objects with your hands and placing them in containers, as well as gripping, holding and releasing them
2. Pile up: By piling objects on top of each other in a disorderly manner, children learn about the properties of objects, e.g. weight, size, texture, how things move and how they fall when they are placed on top of each other. The aim here is to gain as many new experiences as possible. It is recommended, to AVOID tidy stacking such as building towers, as this is a development dead end from which it is difficult to escape.
3. Knocking and scraping is the basis for a child's ability to grasp, hold and use tools, e.g. spoons, wiping, drawing
4. Form pairs: Recognize the same/different and bring the same/similar things together
5. Assign: Recognize similarities, e.g. objects that are similar or belong together
6. Sort: Recognize that objects can be the same/similar and can be grouped/categorized, which requires a solid foundation of placing, pairing and matching, e.g. colors, animals, furniture, vehicles, ...
7. Form rows: complex form of thinking with linear movement: stacking cups, daily routines, rhymes/songs, rhythm, dressing, language, e.g. bigger/smaller, more/less, red-blue-red-blue, O+|O+|O+|, ...
8. Building: 3-dimensional understanding of complex relationships between different objects and forces, i.e. understanding spatial relationships, - requires a solid foundation of placing, stacking, matching and sorting
9. Doodling and drawing: 2-dimensional spatial understanding, necessary for understanding symbols and learning to write later on
10. Coding is the process by which one thing can stand for another. It can only develop if the other learning skills are present and connected well enough.
