Gross Motor

Gross motor skills require the entire body to move. It involves the large, core muscles in the body to move in a variety of different ways. These movements strengthen the core muscles and enable children to stand, walk, jump, skip, run and sit up straight. 

This week we are focusing on ball skills. These skills will add to the list of activities that you can do to help strengthen the muscles in your child’s hands. Enjoy!

Skittles!

Start with a large ball and then challenge your child with a smaller ball to see how many skittles your child can knock over! If you don’t have any skittles in your home, you could always use drinks/water bottles. You could even play as a family and have a competition!

Throw and Catch!

Using a ball, ask your child to throw the ball up in the air and catch it again. You could also throw and catch with siblings or as a family! To challenge your child, you could use a smaller ball or even use a different resource such as:

1. A balloon
2. A scarf
3. A beach ball
4. A bean bag

Kicking!

Practice kicking from a static position as well as having the ball rolled/passed to your child. If you don’t have any goal posts at home, you could make some by using cones or using chalk to draw lines of the ground or on the fence! To challenge your child, once they have mastered kicking the ball and scoring, make the goal posts smaller!