I hope you have found these past posts on what I would include in a basic My Obstacle Course kit helpful. These are just some of my favorites and are examples of items that could easily be assembled to provide activities to help build your child’s skills. I encourage you to go on a little treasure hunt through your own house and see if there’s anything else you can find. (Click here for a past post on Treasure Hunting At Home.)
Academic and Developmental Skill Areas
Just like when I set up My Obstacle Courses for Andrew, I include things to build a variety of academic and developmental skills. The areas I focus on are:
- Literacy
- Math
- Fine Motor
- Gross Motor
- Oral Motor
- Sensory
- Problem Solving
- Social Skills
Sample My Obstacle Course
With the kit items I have given you, below is a sample My Obstacle Course. Please remember that the MOST important thing to remember is to provide activities that YOUR child is ready for at the level they are ready for, regardless of their age. These activities can be modified up or down in difficulty so keep that in mind.
- Pass the question beach ball back and forth 5 times, asking and answering questions based on the question word in front of you when caught. (Social Skills and Gross Motor)
- Crawl through the fabric tunnel. (Gross Motor and Sensory)
- Unscramble the scrabble letters to make words that go along with clues. (Literacy and Problem Solving)
- Write the words you’ve made with the scrabble letters on the lined write on/wipe off board. (Literacy and Fine Motor)
- Crawl through the collapsible tunnel or under three chairs lined up (3 is just an example number!). (Gross Motor)
- Roll one die and use the tweezers to move that many puffs. Repeat with the other die and then count how many puffs in all. (Click here for a post on Easy Math Organizers with a description of this activity minus the tweezers and click here for a post on Tweezers with puffs.) (Math and Fine Motor)
- See how many different shades of blue you can make using the droppers and colored water. (Different Shades of Blue) (Fine Motor and Problem Solving)
- Clothesline clipping- matching up addition equations with their sums. Look at the equation clipped on the clothesline and find the sum. Clip them together and move onto the next equation. (This could be done easily using equations and sums written on index cards or pre-made flash cards with sums written on cards.) (Math and Fine Motor)
- Puff Blowing- Blowing puffs (with mouth or straw) off of a counter into a cup or bowl. (Puff Blowing) (Oral Motor)
This is just an example to show how easy it is to set up a basic My Obstacle Course using these kit items.
My next post will be on my favorite go-to station activities that are easy to make and adapt to different skills and levels.
Engage, Encourage and Empower!