Therapy should not be limited only to the therapy room, but should always extend in the world outside of the therapy center. The motor learning principle postulates that in order for the brain to learn anything,
- it requires many repetitions of the task.
- and the same task performed in various ways.
The required repetition and the variation necessitates that therapeutic
tasks should be incorporated as a part of daily life and in the real world. For
children, work is play. Every child deserves to have fun. At the same time,
every child needs to learn many daily functions of life as a preparation for participating
in the world. Hence play, fun, and function, all need to be included in
therapy. When a task is learnt through play, it requires less repetitions to
learn. Therefore, the point is to learn tasks through play at home and
elsewhere in the external world. This is known as carryover of therapy in the
world of physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
Tasks or activities will heavily depend on the age and capacity of the
child. There are various activities that can be incorporated into the daily /
weekly routine that would provide the necessary meaningful movement and sensory
input. Additional benefits would be a sense of accomplishment, increased
confidence, and self-esteem.
Do activities that
are suitable for your child.
Ensure SAFETY and
SUPERVISION to prevent
- mouthing or swallowing small objects
- prevent falls that can lead to serious accidents such as fracture or
head injury.
Do remember to watch the YouTube videos on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfljcTYjfeo&t So many therapeutic
activities are possible in the form of play to enhance a child's sensory-motor
capacities. These are not a replacement for therapy administered by a
professional therapist. Based on Dr. Ushma's clinical activities and suggestions,
they have been performed at home by parents who avail therapy for their child
at Activ Kaarya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyjHNmxGRoY&t=45s A variety of material such as bubble wrap,
brown paper, rice flour, can be used to have fun. Work on the smaller muscles
of the hand by using the pipe-cleaner and single-hole puncher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy1Iro0GmCI&t=73s Simple rubber band activity for young
children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbr0da596-w this is a video on making playdough at home.
You can make it in larger quantity, it is less crumbly, and children can roll,
poke, squeeze, and press – great muscle work for hands and fingers.
Functional activities that provide therapeutic
value and instill a sense of responsibility
Use the Indian ingenuity, also known as ‘jugaad’ to find items in your
own home so that your child is occupied in meaningful tasks and is receiving
sensory input at the same time.
1. My favorite task for children is removing wet clothes from the washing
machine. Wet clothes are heavy, sometimes tangled, and need to be pulled with
two hands. There you are working on bilateral coordination, tactile, and
proprioception. Not to mention balancing task whether the child is standing on
the floor or standing on the stool and bending over a top load machine. Once
all the wet clothes are removed and placed in a bucket, pushing the bucket to
the dryer stand is another proprioceptive task that also provides
visual-spatial awareness.
2. Push the bucket containing wet clothes towards the balcony or drying
rack.
3. Dry clothes on a rack.
4. Park all your groceries at the main door of the home. Let your child
carry each item from the main door to the kitchen. It could be small bags of
grains, fruit, vegetables.
5. Teach them to drag the 3 kg or 5 kg atta bag while walking backwards.
6. Have your child play in plant soil, dig, and pick up soil with hands.
Working with soil / gardening serves as an anti-depressant. Micro-organisms
found in plant soil, compost, and leaf mold can help release serotonin which is
a feel-good neurotransmitter.
7. Use a spray bottle filled with water to squirt on plants and bathroom
walls.
8. Scrub bathroom walls using scrubbers – rotating in various forms such as
plastic, coir, utensil green scrubber.
9. Wipe tables after a meal using a small wet towel.
10. Wring / squeeze towels with both hands.
11. Pour water on self while using a mug during bath time.
12. Give them a coir loofa to scrub themselves during bath time.
13. Give 3-4 size containers such as small medicine cup, plastic glass,
squeeze bottle to pour water from one container to another.
14. Do not hold the banana for the child. Have them hold a banana with 1
hand, peel it with another hand, eat, and then throw the peel into the dustbin.
Speak to them about the different actions and you end up teaching them a whole
task.
15. Teach them peeling oranges too.
16. Use a small pestle-mortar to pound peanuts.
17. Churn buttermilk using a wooden tool.
18. Pour half kg to 1 kg of rice-dal packets into a jar.
19.
Place a beach ball into a pillow cover, tie it up into a potli, and
suspend it from the ceiling. Tap the
ball back and forth using 2 hands.
20.
Similarly, place a tennis ball in a sock, tie it up, suspend it from
the ceiling. Let your child hit it with a plastic bat.
Pre-writing Activities
1. Scoop grains like rice, dal, and beans using 2 hands, small cups, and
pour the same in another container.
2.
Tear paper and crush pieces of paper into a ball prior to throwing in
the garbage.
3. Finger painting and Vegetable printing.
4. Sort vegetables such as potatoes, onions, lemons, tomatoes etc either
using tongs or hands.
5. Use at least 2 different sized tongs to pick up objects. You can buy
them at a local store.
6. Peel boiled potatoes, mash them if needed.
7. Let your child pick up large pieces of watermelon with fingers. Let them
use fingers to pick up pieces of fruit, salad vegetables, dosa, paratha.
8. If your child can handle a fork, let them poke into pieces of fruit with
a fork.
9.
Cut boiled or firmly boiled vegetables such as carrot, pumpkin, sweet
potato----use a plastic knife.
10.
Use plastic tools such as knife and spatula to manipulate/ cut/ lift
playdough.
11.
Hide small treasures such as coins, beads, bottle caps etc. into
playdough or therapy putty and let your child find it.
12.
Use an eye-dropper to drip colored water.
13.
Pick up tooth-picks and insert them into a salt-pepper shaker. Make
sure that the child is holding the shaker with 1 hand while using the other
hand to insert toothpicks into the holes.
14.
Pull and fix rubber bands around a steel glass or cardboard cylinder.
15.
Fix clothespins on a chart paper.
16. Have your child write large letters in shaving cream, flour, sand.
17.
Writing/drawing/painting on a vertical surface—stick a large chart
paper on the wall a little above eye level. This helps stability of shoulder
and wrist.
18.
Place a large chart paper on the floor and let the child color in
crawling position.
19.
Write/ color on a slate, or blackboard, or driveway with chalk.
20.
Focus on drawing shapes such as circle, square, cross, diamond, etc.
prior to writing letters.
21.
Trace a letter on your child’s back and have them identify it.
Cycling
Many parents purchase a bicycle with training wheels / side wheels, only
to find that their child is having difficulty with peddling. Peddling and
balancing when the bicycle moves is not as easy as we think.
At home, you can place old shoes under the side wheels. Now you have
converted this into a static bicycle. Your child can sit on it and practice
peddling, but the bicycle will not move.
At Activ Kaarya, we use the peddler to practice peddling. Please read
the following blogpost.
https://sensoryintegrationbangalore.blogspot.com/2016/03/peddler-in-pediatric-therapy.html
Learning to cycle may take a few weeks or months. In some cases,
children have learnt to ride a bicycle with side wheels within a few sessions.
Outdoor Activities
1. Go to the park 4-5 times a week, sometimes to indoor play areas that
offer so many opportunities for climbing, jumping, crawling, and balancing.
2. Go for frequent walks with your child, have them carry a weighted
backpack which is 10% of their body weight.
3. While travelling, let your child pull the wheelie bag as and wherever
possible.
4. Take your child to the street market / desi market with you. Let them
experience the colorful atmosphere of the market, look at the sarees hanging in
the stores, the heaps of colorful fruit and vegetables, the smell of food being
fried in small shops, and much more. Carry a bag or a bag pack to fill up and
walk back home.
5. Push a heavy cart in the super market.
6. Carrying weighted bags home from the market.
7. Go for walking in natural enviroments. Bangalore is gifted with natural
sites around the city – Nandi hills, LalBagh, Cubbon park, Banerghatta zoo, that
offer walking and climbing.
8. A day can be spent on a farm where the child can play in mud, splash in water,
and much more.
9. Swimming can be learnt gradually. But first let the child just float in
water wearing the safety gear. A parent can also get into the pool with the
child.
10. If you are planning a vacation, go the beach. The beach offers a natural
sensory environment – the different textures of the sand on various parts of
the beach, the sound of the waves, making a sand castle that involves scooping,
digging, pouring, and pressing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZT5nfhnOjA
home as well as open gym exercises can be done by children 5 years and older.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-u1W7cOCp8
simple activity with balls and cups to
enhance reaction time, attention, cognition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n55pNvYiQw0
rubber band activity for children 5 -6 years and up, for finger strength. You
can do them during travels also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nprmd3l8Nmc&t to improve single-leg balancing, timing &
sequencing to an auditory beat, figure-of-8 walking. Please watch and follow
16:00 onwards on this video.
