Rolling and crawling give babies their first taste of having the independence to explore their environment and choose their own activities. Keep reading to find out how the skills for rolling and crawling emerge, and what games you could play to encourage skill development.

Building blocks for rolling

Learning to control the head in a prone position

Simple rolling

Learning to rotate the trunk with increasing upper body strength and body awareness

Advanced rolling

Moving into more advanced rolling, requiring different gross motor skills and locomotor abilities

Preschoolers

  • Advanced rolls such as forward/backward rolling

    Opportunities to do these types of rolling could be offered, but this is an advanced skill requiring different locomotor abilities to the rolling seen in babies.

Activities

See what activities can help to support this core skill.

See Activities

Early movers is a collaborative project between Loughborough University, the NCSEM and Loughborough campus nursery. Our work has been supported with Loughborough University Enterprise Funding through the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF).