When a child has a motor delay, there is often a decrease in balance¹. Some children need to improve their balance reactions while sitting, others to crawl or to walk and cross some obstacles. Some children already manage to perform all these movements, but jumping is still a challenging activity.
The exercises performed in therapies can be emphasized at home. So, in this post I will show you 5 activities to do at home to help your child develop!
What materials can be used?
- Cushions, pillows or mattress.
- Objects with wheels: skateboard, push toys.
- Big pot.
- Bath towel
- Balls of different sizes.
- Colored paper
- Tape
See below FIVE exercises that will stimulate your child’s balance:
Now that you have realized that the materials are easily accessible, let’s use our creativity together. You need to understand that one of the ways we can improve someone’s balance is by generating imbalances.
- Cushion circuit: place a walkway of soft objects on the floor for the child to walk/crawl on. You can leave a space between them to further increase his or her attention. It’s easy? Add a secondary task. Eg: “take this ball to the basket, walking on the walkway”.
- If the child still cannot stand on his own, you can sit him or her on a skateboard, or even inside a large box and push it, stimulating their sitting balance reactions. Another idea is to sit the child on a towel and drag the child around the house.
- If you have a ball, you can sit the child on it and ask him or her to balance. If it’s too easy, add some challenges like lifting one leg, closing your eyes, or dancing.
- Cut a tape into 30cm strips and place them in front of each other, forming a sequence. You can ask the child to jump over the tapes with both feet together or on one foot. You can also cut a long ribbon and make a straight line. The child can walk on this line, you can ask for lateral jumps, in short, create different challenges, according to your child’s physical capacity.
- Cut colored paper in different shapes (circle, triangle, star …) and stick it on the floor. Ask the child to step on the circle and put their hands on the star. Or you can also ask them to jump in different ways. This is a good tip for working with formats, colors and motor coordination.
I hope these tips help you to encourage your child to have more balance and have a lot of fun! Feel free to adapt all activities, according to the motor skills of each child.
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See you soon,
Hope Team
