Raising a child certainly comes with a lot of responsibility and challenges. One such challenge is ensuring your child gets enough exercise time or time away from the iPad or TV. Children aged between 1 and 4 years old especially need proper social, cognitive and emotional development opportunities in order to reach certain milestones ahead of them. Gross motor skills are especially crucial in this time as their brains, muscles and nerves are developing, maturing and growing. If you have young children at home and need more tips for involving them in activities, read on.
If you are an avid sports lover or player of golf, football etc., encourage your child to take part in some outdoor sports orientated tasks. You can encourage them or motivate them by including sports trophies and medals with their names on, such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd place awards. Browse through these trophy cups online to customise and purchase one ahead of time. The Joblot Trophies and Gifts trophy store has a wide selection of trophies that can be customised and delivered without you having to leave your home. They offer trophy engraving and sports trophies such as a golf trophy or football trophy. Engraved trophies are a great way to get your little one excited. You can show them the trophy beforehand as motivation to complete simple tasks. Invest in some cones and a mini golf set and play the sport with them outside. This is great bonding time too!
Create a Fun Mini Obstacle Course
Crawling, hanging upside down, swinging and dodging items are a great way to develop gross motor skills and coordination in a child. If you are stuck at home and want to involve some play or sport time into your routine, consider using your living room as an obstacle course. Create tunnels out of stacked pillows and place blocks or toys in the course that they can jump over. Your kids will absolutely love this unstructured playtime that you can be part of. This is also a great way to tire them out properly before bed time. Creating an obstacle course outside is just as easy. Use plastic garden chairs, the hosepipe and various other things you can find that they can run around, climb over or crawl through.
A child-friendly treasure hunt outside is also a great way to encourage them to get moving and run around outside. Draw pictures of certain items that appear in your garden and hide a surprise at the last stop. For example, start at the door and place a picture of your big tree – your child will hopefully recognise the tree and you can both run to it to find the next card. Do this with 5 or 6 cards and encourage your child to run between the stops. The idea is to get moving and instil a love for activities and sports in them.
Through movement, activities and play, you can encourage and develop a love of sports within your child - you just need to be consistent and make it fun and the rest will follow.
