Summer Paper Plate Kinesthetic Drawing Game

This Summer paper plate kinesthetic drawing game is super fun and easy for a group.  It encourages visual spatial skills, visual motor skills and body awareness.  It is a definite challenge for kinesthetic awareness.  Here is how you play:

Give each player a pencil and a non-coated, white paper plate.  If you do not have paper plates you could use recycled, light weight cardboard i.e. inside of a cereal box.

Each player should hold the paper plate on his/her own head and be ready to draw on it with the pencil.  You could also just play by having the children close their eyes and draw on regular paper.

Read these directions out loud for the players to follow:

1. Draw grass on the ground.
2. Draw the sun with rays in the sky.
3. Draw two flowers in the grass that are not touching.
4. Draw 2 birds in the sky under the sun.
5. Draw a ball in between the flowers.
6. Draw one cloud in the sky next to the sun.

Take the plate off of your head and look at your crazy drawing.  If you want to score the drawing give yourself points if you –

• Score 1 point if the sun is in the sky.
• Score 1 point if none of the sun’s rays overlap.
• Score 1 point if your flowers do not touch.
• Score 1 point if your flowers are in the grass.
• Score 2 points if your birds are under the sun.
• Score 1 point if your ball is in between the flowers.
• Score 1 point if your cloud is not touching any grass or flowers.

You can play this game with any theme.  The original idea I saw was a Christmas game.  Just create new directions and a new scoring system.

If you are looking for more kinesthetic awareness activities, check out Now You See It, Now You Don’t.

 

Now You See It, Now You Don’t includes 20 worksheets to practice kinesthetic skills without visual input. Some children rely too much on the visual system when completing visual motor activities. These worksheets encourage a child to use his/her kinesthetic sense (where the body is in space) to complete a visual motor task rather than relying on the visual system. The ebook includes 10 easier worksheets and 10 harder worksheets. The theme is animals and sports.  FIND OUT MORE.

The post Summer Paper Plate Kinesthetic Drawing Game appeared first on Your Therapy Source.

Kinesthetic Deficits in Developmental Coordination Disorder

Research in Developmental Disabilities published research comparing kinesthetic sensitivity in 30 children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and 30 typically developing (TD) children all between 6 and 11 years old. Each child put their forearms on a passive motion apparatus which extended the elbow joint at constant velocities.  The children had to focus on detecting passive arm motion and press a trigger held in their left hand once they sensed it. The detection time was measured each time.  

The results indicated the following:
1.  DCD group was significantly slower detecting passive motion than TD children.
2.  kinesthetic sensitivity was worse in DCD than TD children for age groups beyond six years of age suggesting that individuals with DCD lag behind their TD counterparts in kinesthetic sensitivity. 
3.  between the ages of 7 and 11 years the difference between groups is quantifiable and significant.
4.  11 year old children with DCD performed similar to 7 year old TD children.

Reference:  Kuan-yi Li et al.  Kinesthetic deficit in children with developmental coordination disorder. Research in Developmental Disabilities. Volume 38, March 2015, Pages 125–133

Now You See It, Now You Don't includes 20 worksheets to practice kinesthetic skills without visual input.  Some children rely too much on the visual system when completing visual motor activities.  These worksheets encourage a child to use his/her kinesthetic sense (where the body is in space) to complete a visual motor task rather than relying on the visual system.  The ebook includes 10 easier worksheets and 10 harder worksheets. The theme is animals and sports.  

Now You See It, Now You Don't encourages: kinesthetic memory, kinesthetic feedback and visual motor skills.

As with all our products, the activities are reproducible to use over and over again with all the children that you teach.  Download sample page from Now You See It, Now You Don't.

Remember this is an electronic book.  Following payment you will receive a link to download the book.  

To purchase the download for $1.99 with credit card of Now You See It, Now You Don't click on the ADD TO CART button. Following payment you will receive an email with a link to download the book.  

Motor Training without Vision - Kinesthetic Feedback

Psychological Research published a study where the experimental group had visual experience directly manipulated during practice.  The participants practiced throwing darts to 3 specific areas of a dartboard.

The results showed the following:

1.  the experimental group trained without vision of their action, only feedback about the final landing position, significantly improved in their ability to predict the landing position of a thrown dart, from temporally occluded video clips.

2.  the performance of this ‘no-vision’ group did not differ from a full-vision group

3.  the 'no-vision' group was significantly more accurate than an observation-only and a no-practice control group

4.  the observation-only and no-practice group did not show improvment pre- to post-practice

The researchers concluded this study suggests that motor experience specifically regulates the perceptual prediction of action outcomes.

Reference:  Mulligan, D. & Hodges, N. Throwing in the dark: improved prediction of action outcomes following motor training without vision of the action. Psychological Research
September 2014, Volume 78, Issue 5, pp 692-704.

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Now You See It, Now You Don't includes 20 worksheets to practice kinesthetic skills without visual input. Some children rely too much on the visual system when completing visual motor activities. These worksheets encourage a child to use his/her kinesthetic sense (where the body is in space) to complete a visual motor task rather than relying on the visual system.  Find out more at http://yourtherapysource.com/nowyousee.html

 

Kinesthetics and Handwriting

Pediatric Physical Therapy published interesting research comparing 8 children with proficient handwriting and 8 children with non proficient handwriting. All of the children did not have a history of motor or cognitive issues. Each child was tested for kinesthetic sensitivity, discriminate tactile awareness, diadochokinesia, stereognosis, and graphesthesia. Following statistical analysis, the two groups did show a significant difference in handwriting legibility. The was no differences between the two groups in kinesthetic sensitivity or other measures of sensation.

Do you find this is true based on your experiences? I have found that children with poor kinesthetic awareness usually have motor skill delays include handwriting deficits. The researchers did conclude that a limitation of the study is the small sample size but it still makes you think...

Reference: Brink, Anne O'Leary PT; Jacobs, Anne Burleigh PT, PhD Kinesthetic Sensitivity and Related Measures of Hand Sensitivity in Children With Nonproficient Handwriting Pediatric Physical Therapy: Spring 2011 - Volume 23 - Issue 1 - p 88–94
doi: 10.1097/PEP.0b013e318208cc81