1  Infants learn to move and interact with their environment through experience: what they learn and how fast they learn is influenced by the interaction between factors situated within the infant (physical and psychosocial ) and the opportunities for learning provided by the social and physical environment.

2  For any given task or activity an infant's abilities and motor behavior can only be understood by considering the interplay between the child, the task and the environment 

3  Learning occurs when the infant is interested, motivated and engaged. It is an active process of exploration of options for achieving a goal.  

4  Learning is task specific: we learn what we practice. 

5  Infant learning is a progressive process - new abilities expand and elaborate on established task specific abilities and knowledge. 

All experience reflects the complex interaction between many factors

Max explores a side arm throw 
Involves visual pickup, postural anticipation and alignment of segments, wind-up, developing force, responding the perturbation created by throwing action, regaining balance. 

Max knocking over skittles 
Max understands the task, waits for me to position the bottles, leans forward to align the ball with the bottles and throws.  

Providing just-right experience: task and environment selection, adaptation and progression 

By carefully analyzing all the factors that affect child's ability to perform ball related activities using a task-child-environment approach, I can select activities that are appropriate and adapt the tasks and environment to allow the child to succeed. 

In this way I know that I am making the most effective use of the time I share with the child or children, and that I am able to progressively adapt the tasks to improve the child's ball handling abilities.