Children's Learning Activities: Log Rolls, Stepping Stones, and the Foot Flex

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This blog is here for you to find fun learning activities to do with your children. We share great ideas we find and love on the Internet, as well as ideas we come up with on our own! We also like to share resources we find helpful.

To find ideas for your child, click on the age range blog label or on the theme/topic you are looking for (on the left side of the page). In each post, we try to list optimal age ranges for the activity, but you must judge for yourself if it is appropriate for your child. When you try an activity out, please comment and let us (and everyone else) know how your child liked it!

Friday, December 25, 2009

Log Rolls, Stepping Stones, and the Foot Flex

Here are two more activities you can do with your child to work on gross motor skills!

Log Rolls
1. Have your child lay on their back.
2. Instruct them to keep their legs straight and raise their arms over their heads. They are laying flat with arms and legs completely straight (like a pencil is how I explain it).
3. Tell them to try to stay stiff like the pencil as you start to roll them over. Use as little force as possible to get them to roll while still staying straight. The less you push, the more they use their abdominal strength to roll over.

Stepping Stones
1. Taking a few towels or a long piece of butcher paper, make a path for them to walk on. I used our balance beam.
2. Lay out obstacles on the floor in a straight line, leaving room between items for them to step. You can you paper towel or toilet paper rolls, small books, cereal boxes, or anything you can find around the house for them to step over.
3. For younger children, hold their arms or one hand and have them walk, stepping over the items. It takes coordination for them to step over the item, stay in a straight line, and not fall.

*You can also put pieces of paper down and have them walk or hop from paper to paper, like stepping stones. I bought a blue plastic table cloth from our dollar store and we pretended it was water.

Foot Flex and Tippy-Toes
1. Standing up, have them alternate from flat feet to standing still on tippy toes. Have them try to stay on their tippy toes without falling or teetering. You can hold something above their heads that they can only reach by standing on tippy toes.
2. Sitting with legs straight in front, show them how to point and flex their feet. I took a favorite stuffed animal and put it in front of my feet far enough away where I couldn't touch it with relaxed feet but close enough where the tips of my toes could touch it when toes were pointed. We played a game where my toes pretended to sniff the bears feet (foot pointed) and then the toes ran away (foot flexed) saying, "Pee-yew!" She thought it was hilarious.