Name of Activity/Lesson: Activity for Children to Explore the Vestibular Sense: Mouse Pose Activity
Sensory-Related Skills We will be Focusing on
- Stretch out to be giants and curl up to be a mice to increase body awareness.
- Use their creativity and problem-solving abilities to come up with locations for a mouse home.
- Use of gestures or words to communicate their sentiments.
- As they coil up and scurry to Tatty Bumpkin’s mouse song, they improve their sense of rhythm.
- In the mouse position, learn to relax and become conscious of children’s breath.
- As they wiggle their mouse whiskers and aid the mouse in constructing his own tiny house, children can develop fine motor skills.
- As children collaborate to build the ideal little habitat for a mouse, they strengthen their teamwork abilities.
Learning Objective (What children will gain)
The capacity to comprehend and engage with the environment that surrounds a kid is known as spatial awareness. Identifying left from right, reaching out to retrieve a pencil, or avoiding obstacles while walking are all instances of tasks that call for spatial awareness. The first stage in comprehending spatial visualization and knowledge, such as arithmetic skills, visual sensory processing, and bodily awareness, is acquiring the ability to communicate and understand spatial capabilities. Children will be able to feel their bodies and understand how to use them to interact with people (Kranowitz, 2006). They will understand that there are two channels for interaction: verbal and non-verbal.
As kids become older, they rapidly learn that not all situations have simple answers. Creative problem-solving abilities may help students become ready to take on difficulties that call for thinking creatively, whether they need to discover the best answer for a project in an academic context or handle a dilemma in their personal life. Children learn vital life skills including problem-solving, listening, leadership, and creative thinking through cooperating in groups. Promoting teamwide input might result in positive outcomes. The answer to difficulties becomes the result of teamwork rather than focusing on personal issues, like who should get credit for a specific concept. Creative thinking allows children to more clearly imagine and speak about their thoughts, which is one of the fundamental factors for their development.
Skilled use of the tiny muscles that govern the hand, fingers, and thumb is referred to as fine motor abilities. These abilities enable a youngster to perform necessary chores like writing, feeding, buttoning and zipping. Through practice and exposure to a range of toys, objects, and even meals, these skills steadily improve (Ticktin, 2022). Motor skills are an essential aspect of every person’s life, and children should develop these skills in kindergartens and other institutions.
A child’s language, social abilities, fine motor skills, and capacity for self-soothing all benefit from sensory music encounters. Children learn about cause-and-effect relationships and how they may affect their surroundings by investigating various sorts of noises. Sensory Musical Play may take place whenever and wherever. Music has the power to awaken individuals, enliven and thrill them, or soothe and prepare us for sleep by slowing down people’s senses. In this case, children learn to keep the rhythm and listen to music while performing a common task. This approach helps children concentrate on multiple tasks and develop multitasking.
Materials Needed
There is a requirement that must be observed, namely, the space is safe for children. This activity practically requires additional materials for the application. The only material is a song about a mouse pose under which children can move rhythmically and fulfil the conditions of the task.
Description of the activity
Children should locate a comfortable spot on the ground and remove their shoes and socks before beginning the mouse stance. They should curl forward and make a show of kissing their knees while kneeling on the ground with their bottoms on their heels and their arms at their sides. Youngsters must imagine themselves rolling forward towards a ball, take some deep breaths, lie calmly, and close their eyes. Ask them to contract their muscles once they are in the mouse stance. When working with children, a teacher should pretend to be a little mouse. In their fantasies, the teacher and the students should be napping mice, each in their own tiny home. They should close their eyes, breathe deeply, and lie motionless for 15-20 seconds. Children should start wriggling their fingers as soon as they wake up from the mouse stance.
Adaptations for children with tactile sensory concerns
Children who are tactile, defensive, or hypersensitive will avoid, dread, or be troubled by a variety of simple touch encounters that ordinarily would not frighten or worry others. Their avoidance of touch stimuli and absence of tactile play eventually restricts their learning opportunities and the growth of their gross and fine motor abilities. A youngster that exhibits tactile defensiveness or hypersensitivity will react with anxiety, avoidance, withdrawal, or outbursts as a result of their nervous system misinterpreting touch sensations and stimuli (Bodison and Parham, 2018). This activity does not affect the moments of tactile contact of the child with different objects. All that is needed in order to complete the task is the child himself and the desire to interact with children in a non-tactile way.
References
Bodison, S. C., & Parham, L. D. (2018). Specific sensory techniques and sensory environmental modifications for children and youth with sensory integration difficulties: A systematic review. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 72(1).
Kranowitz, C. S. (2006). The out-of-sync child: Recognizing and coping with a sensory processing disorder. Penguin.
Ticktin, A. (2022). Play to Progress: Lead Your Child to Success Using the Power of Sensory Play. TarcherPerigee.