Gross Motor Activity Quotes

1. Give your toddler some large tubular pasta and a shoelace.  Show her how to thread the shoelace through the pasta. 2. Take an empty long wrapping paper tube and place one end on the edge of the sofa and the other end on the floor.  Give him a small ball such as a Ping Pong ball to roll down the tube.   3. Give her some individually wrapped toilet tissues, some boxes of facial tissue or some small tins of food such as tomato paste.  Then let her have fun stacking them.     4. Wrap a small toy and discuss what might be inside it.  Give it to him to unwrap. Then rewrap as he watches.  Have him unwrap it again.    5. Cut  such fruits as strawberries and bananas into chunks.  Show her how to slide the chunks onto a long plastic straw.  Then show her how you can take off one chunk at a time, dip it into some yogurt and eat it.   6. Place a paper towel over a water-filled glass.  Wrap a rubber band around the top of the glass to hold the towel in place.  Then place a penny on top of the paper towel in the centre of the glass.  Give your child a pencil to poke holes in the towel until the penny sinks to the bottom of the glass.   7. You will need a small sheet of coarse sandpaper and various lengths of chunky wool.  Show him how to place these lengths of wool on the sandpaper and how the strands stick to it.   8. Use a large photo or picture and laminate it or put it between the sheets of clear contact paper.  Cut it into several pieces to create a puzzle.   9. Give her two glasses, one empty and one filled with water.  Then show her how to use a large eyedropper in order to transfer some of the water into the empty glass.   10. Tie the ends/corners of several scarves together.  Stuff the scarf inside an empty baby wipes container and pull a small portion up through the lid and then close the lid.  Let your toddler enjoy pulling the scarf out of the container.   11. Give your child some magnets to put on a cookie sheet.  As your child puts the magnets on the cookie sheet and takes them off, talk about the magnets’ colours, sizes, etc.   12. Use two matching sets of stickers. Put a few in a line on a page and see if he can match the pattern.  Initially, you may need to lift an edge of the sticker off the page since that can be difficult to do.    13. You will need a piece of thin Styrofoam or craft foam and a few cookie cutters.  Cut out shapes in the Styrofoam with the cookie cutters and yet still keep the frame of the styrofoam intact.  See if your child can place the cookie cutters back into their appropriate holes.        14. Give her a collection of pompoms that vary in colour and size and see if she can sort them by colour or size into several small dishes. For younger toddlers, put a sample pompom colour in each dish.   15. Gather a selection of primary colour paint chips or cut squares of card stock or construction paper.  Make sure you have several of the same colour.  Choose primary colours.  See if he can match the colours.  Initially, he may be just content to play with the colored chips stacking them or making patterns with them.

Eventually I was ready to learn how to perform routine life tasks again. 'Enabling occupation'—that’s what the learning process was called when it was presented to me. Enabling occupation involved the mastery of skills that I didn’t even know could properly be called 'skills.' How to pick up and carry and manipulate a set of common objects: a handbag, a stoneware saucer, a mobile phone, a paperback book. I was told that my new limbs were capable of hefting an automobile, of bending an iron bar, but I couldn’t make them do any of these magical things—not anything remotely close. Instead, I spent my days trying to pick up a thumbtack from a hard surface using my feeble pincer grasp, to activate a light switch with a single articulated finger, and to fasten a long line of shirt buttons, each of which was around the size of a half-dollar coin. During this period, I worked to improve my gross motor skills in parallel. I relearned how to reach for distant objects without collapsing under my own weight, how to twist a standard brass doorknob, and how to pour liquid from a plastic pitcher into a paper cup without spilling everything everywhere or crushing the handle itself in my grip. Eventually I used these newfound skills to practice clothing myself in simple blouses with velcro fasteners and pants with elastic waistbands, struggling to take it all off again when it was time. At some point during this phase, a team of nameless staff members helped me stand upright in front of a full-length mirror so I could stare at my newly-made body, fully exposed, and with my sharpened vision I was able to see the true extent of my transformation, the exquisite atrocity I’d chosen to perpetrate.

Children requiring primary somatosensory interventions are likely are to display frequent sensory misperceptions, appetite, feeding, or metabolism problems, persistent somatic or visceral dysregulation, fine or gross motor movement or balance impairment, sleep problems, or endocrine issues. Such anomalies will be in excess of normal for the developmental age. The treatment protocol will emphasize somatosensory experiences, self-regulation, and movement interventions, all of which provide the appropriate nature and pattern of activation to help these lower networks change. Language, reasoning, logic, and understanding are de-emphasized in favor of core regulatory functions. The somatosensory activities must be carried out in a richly positive relational context (Core Element 3) as the activity itself is insufficient for positive developmental growth and neural organization. Sensory activities must be planned and scheduled at specific times each day for short periods of about 10 to 15 minutes. Pick activities the child will enjoy, as children will not repeat those that are unrewarding. The activity, environment, and method may need to modified periodically to keep them fresh, attractive, and fun. Never force the child into an activity if he or she is uncomfortable with it. Take baby steps if the child is uncomfortable. Find safe ways for the child to engage in and experience the activity.

Perceptual motor therapy provides integrated movement experiences that remediate gross-motor, fine-motor, and visual discrimination problems. Activities, including sensory-input techniques, stimulate left/right brain communication to help the child interpret incoming information to the nervous system. Goals are to develop more mature patterns of response to specific stimuli, improve motor skills and balance, and stimulate alternate routes to memory and sequencing for those children who do not respond to the methods taught in the conventional classroom.