Stimulate your child at home
Karyna le Roux
Our active lifestyles keeps us busy and often we feel that we do not spend enough time with our children: we drop them off at school and in the evenings we might have to help older children with homework, we have to prepare dinner and a number of other things that needs to be done.
Here are a some practical ideas that will ensure that your young child gets the necessary stimulation:
Balance
- Let your child walk on the lines of tiles and edges.Make it more difficult by letting him walk on his toes or backwards.
- Stand on one leg while brushing teeth (remember to take turns with both legs).
- Let him balance his clothes on his head while walking to the bathroom or room.
- Let him stand on one leg or on a low brick wall (let him also do it with his eyes closed).
- Place a bean bag,pair of socks rolled in a ball or facecloth etc. on your child’s head, let her/him turn on the spot without dropping the item.
Spacial orientation
- Build obstacle courses where they have to go through, over under, around etc.
- Practise to name different body parts from an early age.
- Supply containers of different volumes to play with in water (this is a lot of fun in the bathtub).
Different positions
- Let your child lie on his stomach, stand on his knees, stand on one knee, on one leg, sit on his bum or stand on all fours.
- Let your child stand on one hand and one foot simultaneously – first the opposite sides, then the same side.
Memory games
Name a number of body parts in order, e.g. neck, shoulders, calves, stomach. Then touch the child’s body parts in the same order. First start with only two body parts and gradually increase the number that he has to remember. You will soon realize when it gets too difficult for the child. Let the child repeat the series aloud while he touches the body parts.
Muscle strength
- Let him/her do different animal walks i.e. baboon, crab, bear, rabbit, frog etc.
- Carry buckets filled with sand and water around (you can also race with it).
- Use your arms to hang from a rope or a jungle gym.
- The child can get into an empty box and siblings can take turns to push each other around the house.
Fine motor activities
- Different objects can be picked up with wash line pegs.
- Colour rice with food coloring, mix the colours and let your child sort similar colours together.
- Play with dough or clay.
- Cut puzzles from empty cereal cardboard boxes, and let them build it.
Running games
- Race each other pushing doll prams.
- Skip down the passage in stead of just walking.
- Spray them playfully with water from the hose pipe while they try to run away.
Throw and catch
- Let the children help with folding the laundry, rolling socks into balls and throwing it from a distance into the washing basket.
- Let the children form paper balls and then aim and throw towards a target.
Hoping that you will enjoy these playful learning opportunities.
Karyna le Roux, Kinderkinetics, www.karynakinetika.com, 076 733 9349, karynakinetika@gmail.com