Physical Therapy Activities
Gross Motor Activities for Home
Obstacle Courses
Obstacle courses get kids moving and give them a goal to accomplish. For an indoor course, use furniture, pillows and blankets to create areas to crawl on, under and through. Outdoors, you can use things like hula-hoops to jump in and out of, jumping jacks, belly crawling, bear walking and other creative movements that challenge your child to balance, crawl, jump and run.
Indoor Dance Party
Whether it’s a dance class or an indoor dance party. Dancing is good gross motor practice. It helps kids develop balance, coordination and motor sequencing skills. It also helps build your child’s awareness of rhythm. For little kids, try using songs with lyrics that add movement, like “I’m a Little Teapot” or “The Hokey Pokey.” For older kids, a dance song is fun (Footloose).
Tape Balance Beam
This is ultra simple, but surprisingly fun! Grab several rolls of different colored painter’s tape of color your own masking tape. Tape it on the floor in different lines; make the lines zigzag, curvy, straight, or shaped like a circle, square, or other shape. Then challenge your child to walk each colored line from beginning to end
Jumping/Hopping
Hopping and jumping require strong gross motor skills, balance and coordination. Hopscotch is a simple way to practice those skills. (As a bonus, it can help practice number skills, too!) If you don’t have a sidewalk to draw on or a playground nearby, you can set up hopscotch using painter’s tape or masking tape in your hallway or on carpet. Or tape it on the floor like a ladder. Have your child see how many rungs they can jump. Can they jump farther with a running start? See how many rungs they can stretch – or how far they can go on one foot.
Using Balloons and Bubbles
Balloons and bubbles are a unique way to build gross motor skills because you can’t predict where they’re going to go. Kids can chase bubbles and try to pop as many as possible. While chasing them, they have to run, jump, zigzag and move in ways that require sudden shifts in balance and weight. The same goes for throwing and trying to catch or kick balloons. For more structured play, you can set up a game of balloon volleyball. Or just try to keep the balloon from touching the ground!