Motor Planning, Physical Activity and Coordination Activity for Fall

Here is a Fall or Halloween activity to encourage eye hand coordination, bilateral coordination, motor planning and gross motor skills in children.

1.  Create the bat, spider and ghost.  For the bat and spider we used half a recycled toilet paper roll, duct tape, google eyes and glued on some wings or 8 legs.  The ghost was just a tissue inside a tissue using a pipe cleaner to secure one issue as the head and loop it around so the ghost can hang.  See the picture above.

2.  The child can lace the bat, spider and ghost onto a rope or yarn.  Now get ready to play and explore.

3.  I hung up the rope high on one end and wanted the child to problem solve how to get them down.  First she tried pushing a chair over and climbing on it but it was still too high.  She landed up shaking the rope and they slid down.  She repeated this process several times moving the bat, ghost and spider along the rope.  

4.  We created an obstacle course for the bat, spider and ghost.  I put the rope under a bench and through the chair.  The child had to motor plan and coordinate how to get each object through the obstacle course.  There was lots of bending, reaching and bilateral coordination needed to complete the course.  

5.  Then she started to move herself along the rope.  She tried riding on a wheeled toy (you could also use a scooter board) and pulled with both hands along the rope while I held the one end firmly.  She also ran along the rope moving the spider as fast as she could.

6.  Finally, we folded the rope in half and put the spider on the rope.  She held one piece of the rope in each hand and I held the folded side of the rope.  She would open her arms wide to get the spider to move along the rope web.  

This was an inexpensive therapeutic activity that included so many stages of child development.  It was helpful to start the activity off for the child to problem solve because it increased her interest in the activity rather than me telling her climb on the chair and see if you can move the bat.  She was proud of herself when she figured out how to finally get them down.  This then led to her exploring moving along the rope herself with different physical actions.

Need more inexpensive activities?  Try $ensory Motor Fun on a Budget at http://www.yourtherapysource.com/budget.html