My Obstacle Course: Engage, Encourage and Empower

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

My Obstacle Course Station Ideas

Sports Themed My Obstacle Course Idea #4

Oops!

When I opened the email version of my post from yesterday, I realized that I was not really clear about  the link I had provided for the sports activities page. It was the very first link (in green on my website, purple if you subscribe). You can also click here for it: Enchanted Learning’s Sports Activities. Sorry for any confusion!!

Sports Cutouts from Creative Teaching Press

I also wanted to share some small (1 inch) sports cutouts that I got from Creative Teaching Press. I would use these in ways similar to how I use the felt stickers I shared earlier this week. They come in a package of 150 (25 of each sport) and are perfect for stations working on patterning, graphing, sorting or counting. (Note: I do not have any affiliation with Creative Teaching Press. I just love their materials and find them so helpful in making thematic station activities.)

Use What You Already Have!

The final post for a sports themed My Obstacle Course is just a reminder to look around your child’s toy box, your house or your garage for different kinds of balls you already have that can be incorporated into stations.

Important Note: If you have a child with a good throwing arm or a powerful kick, you may want to incorporate ball activities as “outside” stations. That is not something we have a problem with 🙂 so I make sure to include balls in our My Obstacle Courses to build bouncing, tossing, catching, rolling, and kicking skills.

Red bouncy ball.
Green bouncy ball.
Green ball to be rolled back and forth through the tunnel.
Small white ball originally meant for pool volleyball. We called it a snowball and used it for tossing and catching something smaller.
No balls? Bean bags or rolled up socks work too! Building tossing skills by tossing socks into a bin.

I like to combine ball skills with academic skills to provide more of a purpose for Andrew since kicking the ball back and forth with me is not a preferred activity. When he was younger, we would pass the ball while taking turns counting or saying the alphabet. We progressed onto counting by 10’s, 5’s and 2’s or spell out words as we’d pass the ball.

I hope that those of you with children who are crazy about sports found some ways to combine their love of sports with building some different, academic skills. Next week I will focus on some back to school tips and strategies.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Sports Themed My Obstacle Course Idea #3

Enchanted Learning Website – Sports Theme

I have mentioned this website before (click here for previous Enchanted Learning post) because I love how easy they make it to be thematic while building academic skills. It is a subscription site with some free materials but I have found it to be worth the fee for what I do with Andrew and My Obstacle Course.

My intention is to provide you with some alternatives for what would typically be worksheet, pencil/paper activities. If your child is into that, than by all means go for it! I have just found that with Andrew, the more engaged he is, the more willing he is to put time and energy into building skills in all areas.
I will often cut the pages apart to create crawl and matching stations or combine them with Scrabble letters to get him more involved with actually making words.

Based on the activity sheets that they have on the page I’ve linked to above (there are lots!), these are some ways I would incorporate them into a sports themed My Obstacle Course:

  • Matching pictures with words from the “Sports Word Wheel” or the “Match Sports Words with Pictures” pages (I would cut them apart and combine with clothespins)
  • Combining syllables to make sports words (combine with crawl and match station)
  • Filling in missing letters to form sports words (I’d use the pictures and combine them with Scrabble letters)
  • Unscrambling letters to form sports words (I’d use the pictures and combine them with Scrabble letters)
  • Using the sports question page, I would cut apart the words, set them out and use it as a questioning station where I ask him the question and have him choose the correct word.
  • ABC order page, I would cut apart the words and have him actually put them in ABC order. If this was a challenge, I would include a written out alphabet to use as a reference.
  • Compound words – I’d either cut them apart or use this sheet as a sample and write out the word parts on small index cards or Post-It notes so he can combine them to form the words.
  • There are also a ton of anagram activity pages, which use the letters from one word to create another word. I would use Scrabble letters with something like this and would only do a few anagrams at a time as a station, starting with some smaller, easier words to introduce this to him.
  • I would use the “Sports Alphabet Code” page as is.
  • I would cut out the words at the top of the Venn Diagram page but would keep the bottom section as is and have him sort the words into the correct section.
Note: I do not have any affiliation with Enchanted Learning. I discovered their site while teaching 3rd grade, loved using it with my students for research purposes and found it to be extremely helpful when working with Andrew at home.
Engage, Encourage and Empower!!

Sports Themed My Obstacle Course Idea #2

I found these really cute sports stickers at Michael’s and while they are probably meant for some art project (like a picture frame) or a scrapbook page, I got them to help build math skills like patterning, sequencing, counting and building math vocabulary.

They are great because they can be used to create your own book by removing the paper and sticking them onto paper and writing in math questions but I have decided to leave the paper on them. I have used them as is or stuck on small pieces of magnetic tape to use on a magnetic surface.

Felt football stickers
Up close photo trying to give you a sense of the texture.
Back of sticker with piece of magnetic tape on it.
Felt soccer ball stickers
Felt baseball stickers
Felt basketball stickers

These can be used for patterning (What Comes Next? activity), sequencing (Make the Same activity), math manipulatives or creating books or book page activities as shown below.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Interactive Math Activity

A magnetic Melissa and Doug board meant to be used with their pattern pieces but I use it as a work surface.
A sample station activity with a random number of basketball and baseball stickers.
Question cards to go with activity written on small index cards.
Station set up and ready to go!
First card flipped - How many basketballs?
One way to help your child organize the work - separate the items to be counted.
Moving them back together to answer, "How many in all?"

Activity modification:

If these activities are too basic, you can use these stickers to make more challenging activities like assigning values to each ball. An example using the ball stickers in the photos above would be for the basketballs to have a value of 10 and the baseballs a value of 1. What is the value of the basketballs? 40. What is the value of the baseballs? 2. What is the total value? 42. Add another ball with a value of 100 or 1,000 and you can work on place value up to the thousandths place!

These activities are so basic yet hit on some general math concepts that are important for children to understand. I also love incorporating math language any chance I can!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Sports Themed My Obstacle Course Idea #1

While sports are not a big thing with Andrew, I know that for a lot of children if they could play sports all day they would. For those of you with children like this, it may seem like more of a challenge to find ways to motivate them to build academic skills however there are many ways to incorporate sports and this week I will focus on some station activities that I would use for a sports themed My Obstacle Course.

Sports Themed Pattern Cards

Soccer Balls

The different colored soccer ball pattern cards that came in the package.

Pattern cards such as these can be used for (but are certainly not limited to):

  • patterning
  • sequencing
  • color identification
  • how many of specific colors and how many in all (ex. placing out a certain number of balls, asking questions like, “How many red soccer balls?” “How many green soccer balls?” “How many soccer balls in all?”
  • can be combined with a clothesline and clothespins to build fine motor skills
  • can be combined with a crawl and sort type activity requiring the child to crawl down to put the cards into a pattern or place the card that comes next.

“What Comes Next?” is a station activity to work on patterning skills. This can be as basic or complex as your child is ready for.

Soccer cards for What Comes Next? ABAB pattern.
ABAB pattern finished.
What Comes Next? with AABB pattern.
AABB pattern finished.

“Make the Same” is a station activity that I use to build sequencing/ordering skills and language such as first, second, third, last.

Make the Same using the soccer ball pattern cards.
Make the Same activity completed.

Variety Sports Pack (football, basketball, volleyball, baseball and tennis)

What Comes Next? where the child has to choose the correct card to complete the pattern.
What Comes Next? activity completed - the basketball does not fit the pattern.
What Comes Next? AAB pattern
What Comes Next? AAB pattern completed.

These are just some examples of how easy it can be to incorporate something that may be more visually appealing to a sports loving child while also building math skills.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

 

Gone Fishin!

Andrew was always taken with the fishing game sold in stores, the one where the fish go around in a circle while opening and closing their mouths while you try to get the end of the fishing line in their mouths. He got one and was extremely frustrated. I tried it and got extremely frustrated. The mouths close so quickly and with the fish moving around, I’m not sure how he could be successful with this. I decided to make my own fishing game, adding a bit of a My Obstacle Course twist on it (of course!).

Make Your Own Fishing Rod

I know they sell fishing rods with magnets on the end of the line, but I wanted to see if I could make my own. I went to Michael’s and bought some small dowel rods, red string (red is the easiest color to see), corks, sturdy needles (to go through the cork), circle magnets that would fit on the corks and glue. I glued the magnet to the narrow end of the cork and let it sit overnight to dry. Then I used the needle to attach the cork to the string and wound the other end of the string around the dowel (towards the end of it, without being too close to where it could fall off).

Note: This is one of those things that would be awesome to purchase and make with a group of other people since the materials were all sold in packs.

Homemade "fishing" rod.

What’s Biting?

The rod was complete and now I needed something to fish. I had some fish calendar cutouts and attached some paper clips to them. All I had to do was think about what I wanted to work on with Andrew and write that on the cutout. Below you will see just some of the possibilities for things to put on the fish.

Number Recognition

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Fishing for numbers (to build number recognition skills)
"Catching" the number 15.

Shape Recognition

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Fishing for shapes

Word Recognition or Vowel Sound Identification

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Fishing for words (This particular station is working on the difference between long and short vowels words.)

Addition – Finding the Sum

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Fishing for sums.

During the station, he would use the fishing rod to “catch” the correct fish. He had a ball with it and was able to work on steadying his hand, lowering the cork down to the correct fish and “catching” it on the paper clip. So fun, much more motivating and no batteries required!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Finding Motivators to Gently Push Beyond Comfort Zones

When I did a post earlier this summer on creating a water wheel pouring station, little did I know that a water wheel was going to be the thing to motivate and encourage Andrew to get closer, even into, the ocean.

My mother in law brought a bunch of sand toys, including some pails and several different water wheels. We began by filling some pails with water so that he could pour the water into the water wheels while we videotaped him on our phone. (It’s no surprise that he loves things that spin and watching the wheels spin at different speeds was very exciting for him. Being able to watch it frame by frame on the phone afterwards was an added perk!)

Video clip of Andrew pouring water into the water wheels.

After a while, we decided to use this to motivate him to get closer to the ocean. We gradually moved him closer to the water by first coming up with a plan for how far he was willing to go in. This was important so that he knew ahead of time what he was going to have to do AND he agreed to it. We would then go with him, go in the water and gently get him to the designated point.

Earning the water in buckets by going up past his ankles.

Once he did this, he was free to go back and we filled the pails with water.

"I did it! Now I'm out of here!"
"Whew! Made it! 🙂 "

He eventually went into the water up past his knees, something I don’t think he would have done in the same amount of time on his own. This was huge for him!! Maybe next time we’ll get him to fill a bucket but for now, it was perfect for him to go in as far as he did.

Note: Andrew does not have fear of water. He knows how to swim and is very comfortable in the water. If he did not know how to swim or had water fears, we would have placed focus on something else because going into the ocean would have been too big. This was a sensory processing issue for him, working to deal with the noise of the ocean, the feel of the cold, scratchy water on his legs and the unpredictability of the waves. You can see that he is plugging his ears to lessen the noise and as the week progressed became more comfortable with the patterns of the waves, which we pointed out to him. Not much to do about the scratchy water other than get used to it! 🙂

The day before we left - in on his own.

I share this experience because it was such a clear example of finding what is motivating and exciting for your child and using that to help stretch their experiences and tolerances, even if by the tiniest bit. While your child may not care about wheels spinning (or fans as he was calling them 🙂 ) or videotaping themselves on a phone, there is usually something that they will be willing to work for, you just have to find it.

Start small and slow with things that are doable for them and gradually increase the expectations. Watch them carefully and read them for what they are telling you – (too much? too scary? too big? or Ok, I can do this. I may not be crazy about this, but I really want to do ___. ) and try to stay in the zone of nudging them a little bit out of their comfort zones while still feeling safe. Think about what you experience when you or someone else pushes you a little outside of your comfort zone for your own good. Nervous, doubtful or bothered at first but when you finish or reach your goal, you probably feel really proud of yourself. I saw all of this in Andrew as he made his way closer and closer to the ocean and by the end of the week, he was even inside pretending a pillow was a boogie board, practicing how he would wait for the perfect wave and then ride it in. Who knows, maybe that’s what I’ll be reporting to you next year! Turtle steps all the way :).

Special thanks to my in-laws (G & T) for these awesome photos – Thank You!!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!