Pillow Mountain Delivery Service
Build a ‘Pillow Mountain’ obstacle path across your living room floor using 5-8 pillows. Arrange them so your child must step or jump carefully between them without touching the floor.
Material: Basket
Catch-a-Bug
This catch-a-bug activity provides the child with a fun chance to address fine motor skills.
Preparation:
Step 1: Lace yarn through a basket.
Step 2: Place toy bugs (i.e. figurines, erasers, etc.) on yarn.
Step 3: Have the child manipulate the tongs to retrieve the bugs.
For this activity, you can use any type of basket/container.
Easter Egg Hunt with Spoons
Hide the Easter eggs around the room.
Designate which color eggs each child gets to hunt & place each basket in a corner of the play space.
The child is only allowed to pick up an Easter egg that matches the color they were given, and they must place it on their spoon.
Children will hunt for their eggs, and once they find them, instruct them to use both hands to hold the spoon, as they walk to their designated basket to drop off the egg (to work on bilateral coordination).
If the egg falls on the way over, the child must start over.
This challenges the skills involved in patience, concentration & pacing.
If you want to challenge your children and add more sensory input, place some obstacles in the way (i.e. walking on or over pillows, walking around cones or chairs, etc.).
Basket Sock for Eye-Hand Coordination
This game is all too familiar for many of us: Laundry Basketball.
Challenge your child’s core muscles by having them stand in a tall kneeling positioning.
Place about 10 laundry items on the ground, to the child’s left and right. Have them side bend to retrieve the laundry items from the ground.
Position the basket in front of the child and have them shoot the laundry items into the laundry basket.
Increase the challenge by:
- Moving the laundry basket further away from the child.
- Scattering the laundry items further around the child.
- Holding the laundry basket while moving around the room.
- Tilting the laundry basket away from them, then toward them.
- Having the child kneel on a more unstable surface (such as a pillow or dyna disc).
- Having the child kneel on one leg.
- Having the child shoot smaller laundry items/laundry items that weigh less.
- Placing a timer.
- Setting a goal for how many baskets to make.
Roll, Crawl, and Jump
Place the apples (or any other objects) on one end of the room.
Instruct the child to pick up one apple and lay flat on the ground or on a blanket.
Ask the child to roll 5 times, crawl through the tunnel, and jump 10 times on the trampoline, then put the apple in the basket.
Support your child by monitoring his arousal level, as vestibular input can be alerting. Start slow, take breaks as needed, ask the child if he wants to continue or stop and if needed add proprioception input.
Modifications
If you don’t have a tunnel, you can have your child crawl under the table or just on the ground.
If you don’t have a trampoline, ask the child to jump over a pillow or just jump in place.