My Obstacle Course: Engage, Encourage and Empower

A fun, structured, systematic way to work on your child's strengths and weaknesses at home!

Obstacle Course Mom

Patriotic Pinwheel Blowing

Patriotic Pinwheel

You may have picked some of these up for your yard or bicycle this Memorial Day but did you also realize that you can use this patriotic yard decoration to help your child build oral motor skills?

Andrew had a lot of difficulty trying to figure out how to blow air out of his mouth so I was always on the lookout for ways to help him. I found this particular pinwheel at Michael’s and thought that I could have him blow it to make it spin, giving meaning and purpose to something he finds challenging, while incorporating something he loves, spinning!

When I used this as a My Obstacle Course station activity, I had him either blow the pinwheel a certain number of times or use a certain number of blows. I found that providing him with a straw helped significantly because it gave his mouth some structure. (We also used a straw to blow out birthday candles. Much more empowering for him to do it that way as opposed to having us do it for him.) This year, we will try it without the straw to continue building his oral motor skills.

Note: Try blowing the pinwheel before purchasing it because some of them would get stuck or were more difficult to get spinning, which would only cause frustration.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Velvet Coloring Pages

These are Velvet Coloring Books that I found in the dollar section of Target recently. (Andrew also got one yesterday from a friend at school as a birthday favor.)

Flowers
Cars
Jungle Animals

I have seen these many times before, I even remember coloring with them while I was growing up but picked them up because I thought they would be great for someone who struggles with fine motor skills of coloring. The velvet edges create a natural border around the space to be colored and since the velvet is black, any markings that go beyond the coloring space is not as noticeable.

This is something that I would incorporate into several different My Obstacle Courses knowing that coloring is not a preferred activity for Andrew but using this a little bit at a time, maybe one section at a time, to help build his coloring confidence. I have seen little glimpses of him wanting to color but also struggling with his thoughts that he’s not good at it.

To be completely honest with you, I don’t really care if he is a “good” colorer or not. What my intention with something like this is to give him an opportunity to practice this skill in a safe environment, allowing him to experiment and practice the coloring strokes without judgement or worry about what someone else might say or think. If it turns out to be something that he enjoys but just needed to build fine motor skills in order to do this, than great!

This thought process is not limited to coloring but is something I think is an important benefit of doing My Obstacle Courses with him at home. He gets opportunities to build strengths and weaknesses at the level he is ready for without the worry or pressure of judgement.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Calendar Numbers With Story Starters

I recently found these calendar numbers at the teacher store and thought they were perfect for summer. In addition to being great for working on number recognition and number order, these also include “Story Starters” on the back to encourage creative writing.

Calendar Days with Story Starters by Teacher Created Resources

Each calendar number has a story starter on the back which makes them perfect for either independent journaling or writing together with your child on the computer, depending on what works best with your child.

Story Starters

I am going to include this as a My Obstacle Course station activity to use with my laptop so we can write and print out the short stories or paragraphs that he comes up with. I probably won’t do this daily but will set out 3 or 4 numbers, have him choose a number and that will give us the story starter for that day.

Something like this is difficult for Andrew (and lots of other children) since it requires him to think beyond what he is doing in the present moment so I’m not going to pair it with something else that he struggles with – handwriting. I am going to work with him, type as he talks, start sentences for him to finish, perhaps guide him back to the topic if he gets distracted or starts chatting about ceiling fans. (I can just hear his response to the story starter shown above – “I think people should take more time to…photograph and videotape their ceiling fans. It would be great for them to email them to me or post them on YouTube so I can watch them.” This really could be his response! I’ll let you know what he actually says 🙂 .

If you have a child that can do something like this independently, I suggest allowing them to pick out a special summer journal notebook or if this is something that you will be helping them with on the computer, perhaps a binder that they can decorate. I think something as simple as this could make it more meaningful, especially if you have a reluctant writer. Andrew is always more motivated to do something if he gets to run to the printer to see his work printed out. We will definitely be decorating a binder for him to collect the work he does this summer!

If your child has difficulties getting started with the writing process, go slowly! Work with them on brainstorming first, looking at the topic to see if there are any personal connections that they can make.

Sample conversation for the story starter “If I had my own robot…”:

Well, what do robots typically do? Help make work easier or do things that people don’t want or like to do. What are some things that you don’t like to do but have to do? Oh! Make your bed? Wash your hands? Brush your teeth? Put your clothes away? So, if you had your own robot that could do whatever you didn’t want to do, what would you have it do?

  • This could be expanded to why they don’t like to do the task or what they could do with the time saved by not having to do what the robot does. It doesn’t have to be perfect! Just have fun with them, maybe share your responses with them. What is important is to encourage them to make connections and think about how to relate topics to themselves.

After brainstorming, start out with encouraging them and helping them write a few sentences about the topic. From there, move to picking a sentence (topic sentence or main idea) that they can expand on or describe with more details to create a paragraph. Writing is difficult for many children and by progressing slowly and giving the process meaning within their own lives, they will begin to translate the process to things that maybe they don’t have personal experience with.

Note: You don’t need these cards in order to do an activity like this. I just saw them and looked like they would be great for a My Obstacle Course station. You can make up your own or even google search story starters. When I did that, I found this Story Starter Machine from Scholastic. Pretty cool and free!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

The Nap Mat…Not Just For Napping!

Ahhhh…the nap mat! How I would love to have a mandatory nap time. Perhaps I’ll carry this around with me and when I get tired whip it out and take a nap. Wouldn’t that be awesome!!

Perfect for forward rolls!

This is something I picked up two years ago at the beginning of the school year for Andrew to use during nap time. This year, they had quiet time but not nap time so the nap mat stayed home. As I was setting up a My Obstacle Course and was looking through my closet to see what sort of fun physical, OT- like stuff I could incorporate, I decided that the nap mat would work perfectly!

At the time he was somersaulting everywhere, in fact his preferred mode of transportation in his classroom was by flipping and somersaulting. Having taught for 9 years, I must say I was stumped by that conversation I had to have with his teacher!! Anyways, I decided that his body must be needing this sort of input and incorporated this by using the nap mat as a station, allowing him to somersault his way from one station to the next. He was thrilled and even snuck in a few additional rolls.

As with most things, he eventually moved beyond the somersaulting and on to loving just being upside down. We’d find him hanging like a bat on shelves, something I don’t recall reading about when I read, “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” but then again, most things I’ve encountered with him weren’t in there 🙂 . I incorporated this as well by using the mat to help him do head stands,

Andrew using the nap mat to do a headstand against the closet door.

hand stands and wall climbs (He places his hands down on the mat and walks his legs up the wall/door until he is doing a handstand. I’d suggest a door to a closet or something that can be cleaned easily with a Clorox wipe or something similar unless you’d like feet marks up and down your walls :). Speaking from experience here!).

Andrew using the nap mat to walk up the wall/closet door.

It folds up nicely for storage in our closet and requires only about 1 second of set up time. Gotta love that!!

Nap mat folded up.

Engage, Encourage, Empower!

 

Make Your Own Counting Book

I wanted to work on the math concepts of “How many ___?” and “How many in all?” with Andrew. While my first preference is to use objects or manipulatives, I also realized that it would be helpful for him to be able to count things on paper. I wanted to see how he would do discriminating visually between objects, counting only the things he was asked to count and see if he’d miss any or double count some things.

Counting pages which were then made into a book. Here he is at age 4 counting.

The photograph above shows what the station looked like. So easy to make yet helped him build his counting skills and helped me get a good idea of his counting skills. I simply took a sheet of paper and got out some stickers. I began with each page having just one kind of object for him to count. I also included a number sheet so he could point to the number. This was important because at that time he was not using any consonants so when he counted it sounded a lot like, “uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh-uh, uh, un, uh.” While I could understand his intonations and inflections, as slight as they were, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t putting an answer on him by thinking I heard something I didn’t.

We did it this way for a while and then when I felt like he got that, I added two different objects for him to count. I placed a few of one color star sticker randomly on the paper and then a few of some other colors.

Counting stars page.

I wrote out the questions:

  • How many green stars?
  • How many purple stars?
  • How many red stars?
  • How many stars in all?

I created several different pages using different stickers and different amounts.

Some textured sparkly stickers used to create this page.

I would recommend choosing stickers that are the same at first before moving on to stickers of like items.

I put the pages together by placing the pages into sheet protectors and placing those in report covers. If you are using construction paper, you will have to cut the paper down a bit so it’ll fit in the protectors. These could also just be stapled together.

He really enjoyed doing this activity and loved the fact that he could “read” the book on his own.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

Crawl and Match

This is one of my favorite My Obstacle Course station activities because it is so simple and has so many possibilities!

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: "Crawl and Match"

Crawl and Match is as simple as it sounds. On one end of a carpet runner, or carpeted area, I place some objects, cards or cutouts which focus on some academic skill. He chooses one, crawls down the carpet and matches it with something on the other end. He crawls back gets the next one and continues doing this until all objects or cards have been matched. Because he is matching, he doesn’t need to have intelligible language to demonstrate what he knows.

This particular station was working on matching tally marks...
...with the number represented by the tally marks.

Crawl and Matches we’ve done (or some ideas for you to try):

  • matching items of same color, shape or purpose
  • matching words and pictures
  • matching up numbers for number recognition
  • tally marks matched with numbers
  • math facts matched with sums or differences
  • letters matched for letter recognition
  • uppercase letter matched with lowercase letter
  • matching two words to form compound words
  • matching words with definitions
  • matching holidays with descriptions
  • matching historical figures with descriptions

*This list is by no means all of the possible ways one can Crawl and Match. Think about what your child is working on in school or a skill you want to help them build and see if you can turn it into a Crawl and Match station activity!

Counting out the tally marks.

Alternatives:

I have altered this activity at times depending on how he is doing. I think about what he needs that particular day and since there is such little set up required, it is easy to make these adjustments. Here are some alternatives I have tried:

  • I will provide items or cards for him to sort instead of matching things up.
  • He can somersault, hot-dog roll, bear walk, crab walk, slither, run or skip down the runner.
  • If he needs more sensory input, I’ll use a fabric tunnel for him to crawl though.
  • On days where his engine is running high, I’ll incorporate the stairs for Climb and Match instead. This is more work for him and also helps with coordination when done walking up one foot on each step.

Why Crawl At All?

Years ago, during a course for teachers in my county, I first learned about how cross patterning and crossing the mid-line of one’s body can help students make connections to help them remember things. I heard this again at a brain conference years later, where they emphasized the importance of creeping, crawling, running, swimming, monkey bars – basically any type of activity that utilized both sides of the brain at the same time. I also found it fascinating that the distance from our eyes to the ground when crawling is about the same distance from our eyes to materials we read. I figured that increasing physical activity is never a bad thing and I was hopeful about this considering Andrew’s limitless energy. However, when I returned home and was trying to encourage him to crawl around the house with me, he was not having any of it. I realized that if I wanted him to do this, I needed to do something to make crawling purposeful and came up with this activity.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!