Gross Motor Skills For Kid’s
It can be hard to find ways to keep your children active and moving, especially during current times. We understand how important it is to build your child’s gross motor skills as it helps improve their confidence when playing. If you’re stuck on how to get them moving then keep reading as I’m about to share five easy and creative ideas that will help improve your child’s gross motor skills, all from home!
But first, what exactly are gross motor skills?
They involve the movement of large muscles in the body such as arms, legs, and torso. These allow your child to sit, run, skip, jump, climb, balance, you know, all that fun stuff.
We understand how important it is for kids to be using these skills as well as encouraging their active imaginations, so that’s why we came up with five creative ideas to get them playing, all from the comfort of home! We even included a little help from the Capikooa wooden balance board…for creative purposes!
1. Have a Dance Party
Not only is dancing brilliant for gross motor skill development, its fun, easy, and a natural mood booster. This is the perfect activity for younger children as it allows them to shake their arms, legs, and exercise those little muscles! There are no rules to this one, put on some funny music and have a dance battle! This will encourage gross motor skills such as running and jumping, depending on how wild a dancer your little one is. For this activity, you could use a Capikooa balance board as a stage for them to perform their funky moves.
2. The Floor is Lava
This classic childhood game is perfect for kids with wild imaginations to use as they move and jump around. This activity involves using what you have around the house as props for your children to jump and cling onto, to avoid the lava-filled living room floor. As you can imagine, this game will make your child use nearly all their gross motor skills! They will have to leap onto the props, climb and cling onto them, and then balance so they don’t fall in! Perfect for slightly older kids to play. You could use a Capikooa balance board as a rescue boat from the lava!
3. Reinventing Your Cardboard Box
Don’t throw away the packaging for your Capikooa balance board! You will need it for this next idea, as well as a few balloons, and a curious child. We are all about sustainable and open-ended fun at Capikooa, so that’s why we made our packaging eco friendly and able to be repurposed as an additional tool for fun!
For this idea, fill up the cardboard box with small balloons and place a Capikooa balance board (or a regular slide will do) on your sofa and into the balloon box, then sit back and watch your little ones use their gross motor skills to climb up the sofa, slide down the board and laugh away as they burst the balloons! Alternatively if your children are still babies, you can just place them into the box and let them grab, kick and throw the balloons around, all still using their gross motor skills.
4. Create an Obstacle Course
One creative way to get your children running, jumping and climbing is to make your own obstacle course at home! Obstacle courses are a fantastic way to get your children using all of their gross motor skills as they will need to run, jump, climb and crawl their way through to the finish line. To do this you can arrange objects and toys for them to make their way through and you could even use tape to mark out the edges. The Capikooa balance board makes a perfect toy for this activity as its versatility allows them to crawl under and jump over it! This activity is easy to set up, encourages high energy play and uses many gross motor skills to keep them moving and growing.
5. Hula Hooping With a Twist
Finally, the last activity involves a childhood favourite: hula hooping! We all know how much children enjoy hula hooping, but did you know it’s a great way to engage their gross motor muscles? Why not challenge your little ones to a competition to see who can hula hoop for the longest, it’s a great way to get them to exercise on their own! A twist for older kids, why not challenge them to see if they can balance on a Capikooa board as they hula hoop? This challenge has the added benefit of getting them to use their balancing skills as well as their torso muscle movements. Not to mention it looks hilarious!
We hope you use and enjoy these creative ideas for gross motor play with your family. At Capikooa we are very passionate about child development and encourage creativity and imagination through movement and play.
Which idea will you try first? Make sure to tag us in your photos over at @capikooa on Instagram. Thanks for reading! Next month’s blog post is all about creativity during play, don’t miss it!
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