5 park games to build motor planning & following directions

“Grab your bag and hop in the car”, “brush your teeth and put on your PJs”.

Kids are told instructions all the time, and kids are moving all the time. But following instructions and planning motor movements are skills children need to practice over and over again. 

Here are the top tips from Robbie (SP) and Jaime (OT) for supporting your child to develop their motor skills and ability to follow instructions.

Top tips for supporting motor skills:

• Repetition, repetition, repetition
  • The more you practice, the better the brain and body learns a new movement
• Add variety and novelty to the game
  • This helps the brain and body learn to be flexible and adapt to new movements

Top tips for supporting following instructions: 

• Keep it short, keep it simple 
  • The less words you use, the more your child will remember
• Replace words like ‘before’, ‘after’ with “first…then”
  • Concepts like ‘before’ and ‘after’ add an additional level of complexity to instructions and lead to confusion
  • Instead, say “first…then” so your child can understand the order of actions

Park games are a great way to have fun while practicing motor skills and following instructions. Which one will you try?

Robbie Corgat (Speech Pathologist) & Jaime Siu (Occupational Therapist)