Skill: Motor Planning

Motor planning is the ability to assess a motor activity, plan and organize how to carry out that motor activity, and finally implement motor skills to achieve that motor activity.

Motor planning leads to the ability to carry out a motor skill automatically after enough practice.

Lunch Box

Let the child pick a color of construction paper (paper size should be A4).

Draw a line in the middle of the construction paper and ask the child to fold the paper accurately on the line. This works on his fine manual control skills.

On a separate construction paper, draw 2 handle shapes and ask the child to cut it along the lines. These handle shapes will be used as the lunch box handles.

Ask the child to glue the handles to the top ends of the folded paper (the child should be able to open/close the folded paper as a lunch bag).

Have the child draw what they had or brought for lunch on the inside of the folded construction paper or have the child cut and glue pictures of food items from newspapers/magazines.

Allow the child to decorate the outside “lunch box” using the crayons, markers, and colored pencils.

Holiday Gifts

For this activity, all the materials should be green colored and spread across the room.

Hang the stockings at different corners of the room at a child reach level.

If using a scooter board, have the child lay prone and propel the scooter board around the room to collect the different items and place them in the stockings.

If you do not have a scooter board available, ask the child the perform different animal walks to collect the items and to receive the sensory input (i.e. bear walk, crab walk, frog jumps, etc.)

Crab Walk Soccer

Set up goals approximately ten feet apart using the boxes, the masking tape, or the chalk.

Instruct the child to assume a crab-walk position.

Assume a similar position.

Each one of you needs to try to get the ball to the goal by bumping it with your body or kicking it with your foot.

Hands may not be used.

Finger Twister

Use scissors, markers and paper to create a miniature “twister” board (3-4 rows of 3 colored dots).

Instruct the child on which finger to put on which colors (ex: pointer finger on blue dot, pinkie finger on green dot).

Having child make their own board to take home can address cutting, coloring and visual motor skills.

You can modify the activity for grading to incorporate many other skills you are working on (ex: have child draw different shapes instead of just colored circles, or use letters instead of circles)