Ready Kids Occupational Therapy
Gross motor skills are important for your child’s overall development. These are skills that involve the movement and coordination of large muscles. These skills are important for your child’s daily activities like walking, standing, sitting upright, running and so on. Gross motor skills are also important for the development of fine motor skills, required for handwriting, using cultery, doing up buttons and opening containers.
The development of gross motor skills begins from the moment a child is born and continues to improve as they grow. As parents and educators, we can help children further develop these gross motor skills.The regular practice of gross motor activities helps your kid to build speed, endurance and balance.
Indoor Gross Motor Games
Children love to play outside in parks and backyards. However, there are days when it may not be suitable to go outside, like when it is storming, snowing or too hot. To help you out, here are a few structured gross motor play activities that your child can enjoy at home. These activities are perfect to be practised both at home and in the classroom.
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Mini-Trampoline
Looking for an effective way to get your child to use up their energy? A mini-trampoline can help you in solving this issue. Indoor trampolines are fun and can help your child develop their vestibular system as well. With constant feedback for the body, it can help develop your child’s body awareness, and thus improve their balance. You can make the game more challenging by getting them to throw objects (toys, rolled up socks) into a laundry basket. While your child is playing on a mini-trampoline, remind them to follow the safety rules and continue to monitor them on it.
- Balloon & Bubble Play
Introduce easy yet fun indoor games like balloons and bubble play to your kids. Children find both balloons and bubbles interesting and love to chase them. These games let your child follow the bubbles and balloons and thus, enable the building of their gross motor skills of bilateral coordination and hand-eye coordination.
For bubble play, children enjoy popping bubbles as much as possible. Activities like chasing and popping make them run, jump and move in multiple directions. This helps develop body awareness and coordination. Sudden shifts in direction also help to improve their balance.
With balloon play, encourage your child to throw and kick balloons. As the balloons are softer than balls, it is a great indoor alternative. You can also get them to try and keep the balloon off the ground. This game is great to develop social skills and teamwork as the whole family and friends can join into this game. With older children and more organisation, you can even arrange a balloon volleyball game as well.
- Hopscotch/Sensory Path
Another great indoor game that can help your child develop gross motor skills along with balance and coordination is hopscotch and sensory paths. You can also make use of painter’s tape to draw a hallway hopscotch or sensory path. Hopscotch is a game that lets your child hop and jump. Apart from improving your child’s gross motor skills, the game can help them practise number skills. Sensory paths can be simple outlines of lines and shapes so they can walk along and jump to. You can make it more challenging by giving them instructions to follow e.g. walk along the line and jump into the square.
- Obstacle Courses
Indoor obstacle courses are a great fun way to develop your child’s gross motor skills. You can ask them to set up their own obstacle course by arranging light furniture, blankets and pillows. Giving them the opportunity to create their own obstacle course, gives children a goal to accomplish and thus, enhance the level of enjoyment as well. Whether they are setting up pillows on the floor to jump on, crawling under the table or walking along the couch, these activities require gross motor skills like walking, holding, crawling, moving and so on. Thus, when you make your child participate in such activities regularly, they invariably improve their balance and coordination.
- Dancing
Dancing is a great gross motor skill activity. Whether it’s about developing balance and coordination or improving sequencing skills, dancing can make your child develop most gross motor skills. If they enjoy it, maybe enrol your child in a dance class. You can also encourage them to dance at your indoor parties. Want to make your kid aware of rhythm? Dancing is the best way to make them learn this skill. Just put on some music and you can dance together as a family. For younger children, you can play musical rhymes like “The Hokey Pokey” or any nursery rhymes they know. To make it more challenging, you can play musical statues where the child needs to stop when the music stops. This helps them develop better control of their body.
Whether it’s about improving your child’s body awareness, balance and coordination or building muscular strength and endurance, encourage your child to participate in different gross motor activities. Make them practise these activities from a very early age to help in preparing for school and the outside world. Remember, gross motor abilities have a direct influence on your child’s everyday activities. However, if your child has difficulties grasping these skills, do not hesitate to consult an experienced Occupational Therapist for help.
Check out ReadyKids OT for more activity ideas to do with your child at home.
