This is an outline of what I do when I set up My Obstacle Course for Andrew. This particular course is one we did a few years ago when he was 5 years old. I like to do 20 stations, which usually takes us about 45 minutes to an hour. Don’t panic at the number! This is what works for us but you can do whatever number works for you. Most of the stations are crawling through tunnels or if I know that a certain activity is more challenging for him, I break it into parts so he has a chance to move in between. The station activities are only meant to take a few minutes each but they let me know right away where he is with that skill or concept.

Personal Note: I consider this time with him sacred. I do not take phone calls, look at email, or fold laundry. I am there with him and he has my full attention. I have learned that he mirrors the attention and energy that I am giving him so if I am distracted or busy with something else, he will reflect that.  I want him to engage and work with me so I can help him and this time disconnected from everything but him is well worth it!

Sample My Obstacle Course From Start to Finish:

1. Choose theme (based on what they were doing in school) and review skills he is working on:

Theme: Land Transportation

Skills:

• speech- practice /f/ and /s/ sounds
• fine motor- scissors, gluing, clipping, printing, peeling and placing stickers, stringing beads, track building
• cognitive/problem solving- creating models using blocks, concept sorting (air, land, water), choosing based on question (what does it do?), pretend play
• social- listening and answering questions, greeting

2. Look through materials to see what I have:

• Car calendar cut outs
• Car stickers
• Vehicle manipulatives
• Pattern blocks (tangrams)
• Letter stamps
• Letter beads for stringing
• Scrabble letters
• Construction paper, scissors and glue

3. Went on Enchanted Learning website (www.enchantedlearning.com ) to see what they had that I could incorporate:

• Circle vehicles page- I could cut it up and turn it into a vehicle/non-vehicle sort
• Beginning letter page
• Vehicle picture/word matching page- I could cut that up and use it as clipping activity on clothesline or crawl and match on carpet runner
• Vehicle book to practice printing vehicle words

4. Went through toy closets to see what we had:

• train and tracks
• cars and trucks- could use for putting in order by size or have him get the vehicles that do a certain job (ex.  which vehicle tows?  which one hauls dirt? which one goes fast around a track?) or using a group of vehicles, match up the vehicles that do the same job (ex.  two tow trucks, two dump trucks, two fire engines, two race cars)
• pretend play garage- could use with script to work on turn taking

5. Made my list of 1-20 to scatter skills and activities throughout course:

1. Social- hello!  how are you doing?
2. Gross motor- crawl through tunnel
3. Gross motor- ball rolling back and forth for visual tracking 10 times
4. Cognitive/problem solving- unscramble scrabble letters to make vehicle words
5. Math- vehicle manipulatives sorting (land, water, air) – which has most? which has least? how many in all?
6. Fine Motor- write name on beginning sound paper (from Enchanted Learning)
7. Literacy- beginning sound paper- circle beginning sound of each word
8. Gross Motor- crawl through tunnel
9. Fine Motor- string letter beads to write “train”
10. Literacy- read “Go, Dog, Go!”
11. Cognitive- pink bag with 8 vehicles to match up according to job (tow truck, dump truck, race car, fire engine)
12. Pretend play- train track set up for Thomas
13. Literacy/fine motor- clothesline clipping words (written on calendar cutouts) that rhyme with vehicle words, trying to include sounds he is working on in speech /f/ (ex. car/far, boat/float, train/plane, truck/luck, tow/low, race/face)
14. Cognitive/Problem solving- “Make the Same” using pattern pieces to make car or train
15. Cognitive/Problem solving- “What comes next?”  Patterning using car stickers on paper
16. Fine Motor- cut out 3 pictures of vehicles from toy catalog
17. Fine Motor and Literacy- writing one word- vehicle book from Enchanted Learning
18. Fine Motor and Literacy- writing one word- vehicle book from Enchanted Learning
19. Gross Motor- crawl through tunnel
20. Literacy and Gross Motor- “Crawl and Match” vehicle pictures with words

6. Set up

Now is time for set up, which is easy because materials are gathered, plan is made.  Just a matter of arranging materials and doing some basic things like cutting, pasting and writing out some words.

Important Reminder – These are all skills and concepts that were at the level he was ready for. Every My Obstacle Course looks different because every child is different and every house has different materials, tools and toys. That is why I have the “My” in My Obstacle Course, because each Obstacle Course is customized for what an individual child needs. Talk about Individualized Education Plan!! 🙂

Engage, Encourage and Empower

 

When doing My Obstacle Courses with your child, start small and basic so you can learn firsthand about your child’s learning. Remember to have fun with this! Yes, there are a lot of things I want to help my child with but adding something like this made it so much easier to engage with him, encourage him in playful ways and empower him by helping him build his skills no matter where they are. Doing this with him gave me more information than I could ever have imagined and allowed me to see all that he was able to do instead of placing all of the focus on what he was not able to do.

Make It Engaging

This is where it really starts getting fun while also making a huge difference! Since the “sit at the kitchen counter” routine failed miserably for us, I knew I needed to “up my game” and decided to make this an adventure for him. I realized early on how easy it was to do this when using the structure of an obstacle course. (I tried many other ways which only resulted in me searching frantically for something to bribe him with. Not what I wanted at all!)

I didn’t want My Obstacle Courses to always be the same old, same old every time. This is why you will find me using a lot of thematic and seasonal materials. I also find that the most motivating and inspiring teachers are the ones who have some tricks up their sleeves, which is why I like to incorporate some mystery through the use of zippered bags and containers to hold materials or finding items around the house or in the grocery store to repurpose for skill-building. Because of this, he is so excited about engaging with me and is always curious about what he is going to find at the next station.

Treasure Hunting At Home

This idea came to me while brainstorming ways to work on skills. My first thought was, “Oh, now I need to go to the store and get a bunch of stuff specifically to work on these with him.” But as I was getting his clothes ready for bed one night, I looked around at all of the toys that he hadn’t been playing with and it hit me like a ton of bricks! They were just sitting there waiting to be used and so I did a mind-shift. Instead of being disappointed by how he wasn’t playing appropriately with them, I had this flash of ways and ideas for how I could use them, just not as they were intended to be used. I had the skills I wanted to help him with in my mind and chose toys that could help me build those skills.

Andrew’s closet wasn’t the only place I hunted. I discovered all sorts of wonderful learning and skill building tools all around the house. Board games we had accumulated held all sorts of goodies (dice, dominos, Scrabble letters, etc.). Our cooking tools were now fair game (whisks, wooden spoons, basting brushes, mixing bowls, measuring cups, plastic containers, etc.) as well as travel bags (which have lots of zippers and snaps for fine motor skill building!) and tote bags.

Kitchen cupboards held lots of items perfect for sensory work. Rice, pasta and dried beans were used to make sensory bins (Sensory Bean Bin). Salt, sand and shaving cream were combined (separately 🙂 ) with trays to make sensory writing stations. (Here is one post on that: Foil Pan Salt Writing. You can check my website for other ideas!)

When I wanted to work on identifying textures for sensory awareness I looked through drawers and closets finding scarves, sweaters, sandpaper, bubble wrap, cotton balls, aluminum foil, those green mesh-y things they put around glass containers so they don’t crack, cheese-cloth, etc. Once I started doing this, I became like a squirrel and would find treasures all over and stash them away to use in a future Obstacle Course!

There were also things like collapsible tunnels, a sit and spin, a mini-trampoline, balls, mats, stairs and chairs that could be used to build gross motor skills and meet sensory needs. I have found that most people who have children with sensory issues or developmental delays have tools and toys like these. Why not combine them with another skill area and create a more purposeful activity?

I encourage you to think about the skills you want to work on with your child and go on a little “treasure hunt” of your own. You will be amazed at all that you already have!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

The last two posts have introduced you to how I approach working with Andrew at home by meeting him where he is, providing activities that are developmentally appropriate for him and knowing what he needs to work on and where we are heading with those skills. Hopefully you have some ideas for skills you want to work on with your child. I can honestly say that when we first compiled our list of skills to work on, I was a bit overwhelmed thinking I had to work on everything right then and there. I realized early on that trying to do too much at once was not going to work and would only drive me crazy. I always remind myself that making progress only requires taking one step at a time. It doesn’t matter if it is a big step or a little step, either one moves me, and in this case Andrew, forward 🙂 .

Conquer by Choosing and Combining

I decided that the best way for me was to pick one or two skills from each area to focus on and find ways to combine those with other skills. Here are the skill areas I incorporate:

• fine motor
• gross motor
• oral motor
• literacy
• math
• sensory
• problem solving
• social skills

(You can find these on my website and if you select a skill area, it will show you past posts that are focused on that area. This is a great place to find activities, which can be adapted to most seasons and themes.) I will explain more about this in Friday’s post about planning and preparation, but for now think about one or two things from each of these areas that you’d like to work on with your child.

Sneaking In Skill Building

Whenever possible, I pair up a skill that may be more challenging or considered a weakness with one that is a strength (Ex. literacy and fine motor; math and gross motor). I have found that this helps take attention from something that they know they are not strong in by allowing them to build it along with something they feel good about. A great example of this was my recent post on Giant Alphabet Beads. Andrew was willing to work on his stringing/lacing because it was combined with a preferred activity, something he is good at – spelling. Doing this always reminds me of how Jessica Seinfeld, author of “Deceptively Delicious” sneaks vegetables into kid-friendly dishes. I’m trying to sneak in things that may not be very exciting to work on into fun, kid-friendly activities. This is especially important for children who are very active and like to be moving. Activities that encourage and allow children to be moving while working on another skill makes it so much easier to engage them. The fact that both sides of the brain are activated through cross patterning activities (like creeping, crawling, walking, running, monkey bars, swimming, etc.) doesn’t hurt either :).

Modifying and Adapting Station Activities

The station activities that I share are designed to give you a general idea of ways to approach a certain skill. Please know that most of these can be modified and adapted. I just try to explain the what, why and how so that I can help other people who may be needing something similar. Do not be discouraged if there may be skills that you have to break way down. The following is an example of having to do just that with a skill we were working on…

Skill:  Can build with blocks horizontally and vertically.

Andrew had a very difficult time getting this skill and so I broke it down into a very simple task. The first time, I provided 3 blocks for him and made a model (with the exact same blocks) for him to use as a reference. I wrote out the directions, “Make a tower with 3 blocks.” When he started lining up the blocks next to each other, I pointed out the model and told him we were going to build the tower up and to see if he could “make the same.” After that redirection, he got to work stacking the three blocks. The next time, I did it without the model and the time after that I tried it with 4 blocks, slowly increasing the number of blocks so he would get the concept. This was not something that happened overnight but with a slow and gradual progression, he was learning that a) he could do it, b) there were ways to position the blocks so that they wouldn’t tip over and c) the amount of pressure and steadiness of his hands so that they wouldn’t knock over the blocks when placing one on top. Doing it like this allowed me to engage him in a way that was challenging yet not impossible, encouraged him by showing him that he could do it and empowered him by acknowledging his success and modifying the activity when he did it.

Personal Note: I feel like I have enough information to teach a class on this alone. I hope this is helpful. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to email me at obstaclecoursemom@yahoo.com. Thank you for allowing me to share with you!!

Tomorrow I will share about how to make it engaging, utilizing all learning styles and treasure hunting at home.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!