School-based occupational therapists work to support and develop functional whole body (gross motor) skills to enable participation and confidence in physical education (PE), on the playground and accessing the school environment. There are four main areas we focus on to improve participation and confidence as seen below.
Advice and resources
Activities for you to try to help develop overall whole-body skills:
- Animal walks
- Animal walk cards
- Gross motor trays intervention ideas
- Sport such as swimming, walking, running, and playing ball games.
- Trampoline and jumping games
- Tug-of-war
- Games such as Twister/musical statues/Simon Says
- Lying on tummy to do activities like drawing/colouring/puzzles/Lego
- Painting or drawing on an easel in a high kneeling position
- Activities at the park, such as monkey bars, climbing frames and swinging
- Crawling on all fours or commando crawling, in, around, over and under different obstacle courses
- Jumping/hopping games – start with jumping activities and then move onto hopping once jumping is mastered
- Balance on each leg, increasing your time
- Jumping in any direction – follow a command e.g. forwards, sideways backwards, diagonally
- In a straight line, into hoops/squares, over a rope
- Star Jumps, Hopscotch and using a trampoline
Additional websites:
- Balance & coordination: Balance & Coordination – Kid Sense Child Development
- Gross motor skills: Gross Motor Skills | Gross Motor Skills Development | Kid Sense (childdevelopment.com.au)
- Yoga: Cosmic Kids Yoga – YouTube
- BBC couch to 5k: Couch to 5K: Get running half an hour in just nine weeks – BBC Sport
- Apps: Apps to help gross motor skills – Source Kids
- PE activities: p1-7-multi-activity-booklet.pdf (cne-siar.gov.uk)
*These are universal strategies to help children and young people with these common functional concerns. Should you require more specific support please seek appropriate professional advice.
For more information about local services please contact: cognus.therapies@cognus.org.uk