First off, what is a gross motor skill? Gross motor skills are activities that involve the large muscles of the body.
In child development, it’s so important to be exposed to activities that help develop all the muscles in their bodies. As adults we try implementing exercise regimens, but even as adults we have a really hard time with that.
So as always, we want to find fun and interactive ways to help kids succeed whether it’s academically or whether it’s in developing gross motor skills.
One of my favorite ways to implement gross motor skills is by creating an obstacle course. It really doesn’t matter how young or old someone is, kids of all ages love obstacle courses.
I literally make an obstacle course every week in my class.
One of the many things I love about obstacle courses are that they can be different every time. Kids can help create them too (which works on even more skills).
Another thing I love is that you can just use things around the house. I am fortunate enough to work at a clinic designed by an Occupational Therapist, so our equipment is pretty awesome, but it’s so easy to just use pillows, blankets, tape, chalk, or anything else at home to make an obstacle course.
What you want to think about when you’re making a course is what is your purpose? Here are some ideas of why you might want to do an obstacle course.
Whether you’re working on gross motor skills, or if there’s a different developmental skill you want to target, this activity is great for so many reasons!
It’s adaptable, so be flexible depending on who you’re working with, and what stage of play the child is at.
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This activity is great for kids at an FDL of: 5-6
The Functional Developmental Levels (FDL) are based on The PLAY Project and DIR/Floortime
This activity is great for kids primarily participating in stages: 4-6
The Stages of Play come from Parten’s Stages of Social Play.
This activity includes: vestibular and proprioception
Our senses include more than the usual 5 senses. Some kids may seek certain types of sensory input and/or avoid other types.
This activity is good for targeting the following developmental skills: communication, cognitive, executive functioning, motor, social
These are the main areas of child development addressed in the Early Intervention Tutorials
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In this section, I will give you specific examples of what you can do in this activity to address specific areas of development.
