Now that the weather is starting to warm up a bit and rainy days are few and far between, this is a great time to head to your neighborhood park and get some fresh air. Parks provide endless opportunities to work on gross motor skills and strengthening! Here are some of our favorites: Monkey bars […]
The Value of Peer Play
I was recently at a school working with a kiddo. This child has made huge gains and is now easily able to access her school environment. The one area that is still a slight struggle is the play structure. She is able to do all points of access on all the play structures in her […]
Monkey Bars
We get a lot of kids who want to get better at monkey bars. Its something that their friends and classmates are doing with ease and they are struggling back at the first monkey bar, or having to have someone help them across. Here are some ways we have found to help them: Get used […]
Playground Play
I was browsing through instagram a while ago and saw this great photo (above) of my friends’ son playing. It immediately reminded me (not that I needed much reminding) why I love playgrounds for kids! Besides just giving kids the opportunity to run around, play and explore, when I am working with a kiddo at […]
Recipe for Playing Outside
I had the fun the other day of spending the day with a friend from high school and her children. We spent the day outside and the kids played the entire time without prompting from us and didn’t want to leave when it was time to go. Looking back, here are some things that I […]
Should We Wrap Kids in Bubble Wrap?
I recently read an article on Huffington Post about a new statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) stating that kids should not jump on trampoline’s because its not safe. Now I am sure they have looked at the numbers and seen how many injuries have occurred (its actually down in 2009 from 2004 […]
Gross Motor Ideas for the Park
Now that nice weather is upon us its time to get outside and play with the kids! Parks are a great place for kids to effectively ‘burn off’ their energy while working on gross motor skills and socialization. Here are some of the great things about parks: There are other kids around to play with. […]
Bringing Therapy Home
This is a short post to reference another article I had written that I wanted to make sure I shared here as well. PediaStaff recently featured an article that I wrote about implementing PT at home for kids with Down Syndrome. I realized as I wrote the article that although it was specifically related to […]
Autism and Gross Motor Skills
In the most recent issue of Pediatric Physical Therapy there are three articles regarding autism/autism spectrum disorder and gross motor skills. I was actually really excited to see this because I sometimes feel that gross motor skills get put on the lower end of the priority scale for kids who are diagnosed with autism, autism […]