Okay, so the title may be confusing but this is what our therapist and her kiddo called it. I loved the idea. They took these awesome carpet squares that we had found at ScrapSF and spread them out across the carpet and mat. They then had some clothes pins on one side of the room and a cut out shape in the middle of the crash pad. The child had to start on the side with the clothespins and pick up one and then hop from carpet square to carpet square (without touching the mat or carpet) all the way to the crash pad where they got to crash and then put their clothespin on the cut out shape. They then would make their way back across the carpet square path to get their next clothespin.
Now this was brilliant in several ways.
- They got to work on fine motor control and strengthening by using the clothespins.
- They had to plan out which path they wanted to take so they had to sequence as well as judge distances and their ability to hop across the distance without touching the ground between the squares.
- Each time they hopped (leading with one foot) from one square to the other the square had some slight sliding movement and they had to work on their static standing balance so that they wouldn’t fall. In addition, after they realized that the square would be moving they were able to start relying on some anticipatory postural control so that they were prepared for the slight movement.
- There was lots of repetition of all pieces of the task, especially if they touched the ground because they started over again!
- They got the proprioceptive sensory input of jumping into the ‘crash pad’.
- There was practice of gross motor skills for hopping/leaping from target to target.
- They worked on visual scanning as they picked the next target to hop/leap to.
What ways could you modify this to work on the skills you wanted?
