Motor Planning - Page 43 of 44

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.)

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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)

Big Tac Toe

Help the child cut 4 equal pieces of masking tape. Each piece should be about 3 feet long.

Use the masking tape pieces to make a large tic tac toe board on the floor.

Use the construction paper to cut shapes (each player should have his own shape). You will need 5 pieces of each shape. Let the child help you with a cutting of the shapes.

If working on writing skills, each player can write his name on his shapes.

Instruct the child to lay prone next to the tic tac toe board.

Using the pieces you cut, play the tic tac toe game by placing the pieces while keeping your body prone and reaching with your arms out to place the pieces on the board (i.e. crossing midline).

For grading: instead of writing your name on each shape, you can write your initials or any other word as appropriate.

Ping Pong Plates

This activity is divided into 2 parts: creating the rackets and playing ping pong with the rackets and the balloon.

First, glue the wooden stick to the paper plate with the wooden stick sticking out of the plate. The wooden stick is going to be where you hold the racket so the length of the stick that comes out of the paper plate should be at least 4 inches.

Once the sticks are glued, use the crayons to color or write on the paper plates.

Inflate the balloon.

Hold the paper plate racket and bounce the ball around.

If done in a group setting, you can instruct the kids to use the paper plate to bounce the balloon from one to another while playing a ping-pong game.