There are many ways to stay healthy, active, and on track toward progress during the winter months or the holidays! With cold weather slowly approaching, participating in our favorite outdoor activities can be limited. Don’t worry! We teamed up with physical and speech therapists to share some fun activities you can do safely indoors!
What’s great is almost every activity done outdoors, can be done indoors with a little creativity! While you can’t ride your bike inside, you’ll be amazed at the crafty ideas our clinicians came up with to encourage healthy activity indoors.
Building an Indoor Obstacle Course with PT
Wondering how you might spend a cold or snowy day inside? Building an obstacle course can be an easy, fun way for your child to play indoors! Whether your child is crawling, creeping, walking, or rolling, there are three elements to keep in mind when creating a safe, fun, and challenging obstacle course.
Get Creative with Surface and Elevation Changes
This could be a flat change from hard floor to carpet, a small “bump” up to a rug, a step up to a hard box or a soft pillow, or any other creative ideas you have! The more changes, the better!
North Pole Tundra/Winter Wonderland: Fill an area with surface and elevation changes, and then cover in a white sheet to create an opportunity to cross the North Pole Tundra or to play in a Winter Wonderland. Collect balled-up paper “snowballs” to throw at the end!
Toss Things Up with Direction Changes
Place multiple objects close together for your child to navigate. The closer the objects, the more difficult the challenge!
Wrapping Paper Weave: Stand up rolls of wrapping paper to create a course for your child to weave in and out of. Try to leave all the rolls standing!
Challenge Your Child with Dual Tasks
We often have to move about the world doing more than one thing at a time. A dual task can be something for your child to do with their hands or with their mind as they move around.
Special Delivery: For a hands-on dual task, navigate one of the above obstacles (or create a new one!) while carrying a plate of cookies or a tall glass of water to set out for Santa. Try to keep all the cookies on the plate and all the water in the glass!
The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer: For a cognitive (thinking) dual task, navigate one of the above obstacles (or create a new one!) while naming or singing Christmas Carols. After all, the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!
Practicing Speech During Holiday Activities
Although it is the most wonderful time of the year, it can also be the busiest time of the year and making time to practice skills your child is targeting in speech therapy may seem impossible! While participating in these festive traditions, there are many ways you can target a variety of speech therapy goals your child may be working on.
Building Vocabulary While Making Gingerbread Houses or Holiday Cookies
Making gingerbread houses or holiday cookies are a great opportunity to practice building on your child’s vocabulary, increasing the number of words they use in a sentence, and labeling. While making the houses or cookies together, talk through what you are doing like narrating a story. This allows your child to hear meaningful language to enhance language development.
A great opportunity to practice some skills would be engaging in conversations where your child is challenged with answering “WH Questions”.
Check out this list of WH Questions you can ask your child!
Who
Who …. are you making gingerbread houses with?
…. do you want to help you put on the icing?
…. is going to live in your gingerbread house?
…. wants to mix the ingredients together?
What
What …. are you going to put on your house first?
…. is your favorite candy we have here?
…. color candy are you going to put on?
…. cookie cutter do you want?
Where
Where …. should we put the candy canes?
…. should we put the icing?
…. did the candy go?
…. do we mix the ingredients together?
When
When …. should we put on the trees?
…. should we open new candy?
…. can we put on more icing?