Maxamec

Playing with Maxamec helps develop a child’s brain

When a child is born the brain is not yet fully-grown. Billions of nerve cells do branch through normal stimulation and play. They develop thousands of contacts with other nerve cells.    Signals from the 5 senses and the body ascends from the spinal cord through the brainstem. The child doesn’t know how to interpret them: They appear chaotic to their immature brain. Meanwhile structured, logic signals descend from the cortex. These signals all goes to the limbic system and meet there, it borders booth the brain-stem and the cortex. In the incompatible encounter between these totally different signals-chaoses and order- play is born, free play: orderly and chaotic play, a play where the children can find their own identity. Booth are needed for the brain to fully mature.

In the process of learning to master the battle between chaoses and order MAXAMEC is a most outstanding toy where you can destroy what you have built and then rebuild. It is a tool the children can use on their own terms in whatever phase they find themselves. They can imagine, dream, improvise and create. The organs of balance and the co-ordinating nuclei of the cerebellum develop early in a child as the muscles and movements develop. Co-ordination between eye movement and body movements are exercised through play .This is also vital for language, reading and writing as well as for the mathematical skills. In the brain-stem nuclei are formed, that control orientation in the 3-dimentional space. These nuclei will best mature in wild play with somewhat larger movements, where a sense of balance is necessary in the body positions and movements. Such a big toy as MAXAMEC invites the development of those skills, not just the manual skills but also movements of the whole body. To be surrounded by the things they have built activates the brain quite differently than other toys, which they only sit and fiddle with. Everything that has to do with activity is integrated on different levels of the brain. If one only sits watching a TV screen, there is no integration at all!

Social skills develop as they play with MAXAMEC. They learn teamwork, mutual respect, to take turns, empathy, how to express themselves and to listen. Through planning, trying different solutions to see the consequences of different choices made, they mature.

    Ninna Lagerberg Medical Doctor, Child and Youth Psychiatry