A great way to capitalize on the nice weather, stimulate the senses, and strengthen the trunk and upper body is to spend time gardening outside. It is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with your child and share the experience of growing plants, flowers, fruits, and vegetables.

Gardening offers the unique opportunity to stimulate many of our senses. Our eyes can appreciate the beauty while our noses enjoy the scents of spring and summer. Our tongues can taste the fruits of our labor and our ears can hear the sounds of bees, animals, and birds. Our sense of touch is essential when planting and enables us to appreciate the different textures of plants, flowers, and vegetation.

Our proprioceptive sense, which is heightened through input provided through our muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons, can be stimulated by “heavy work”. Your child can assist with some of the “heavy work” of gardening by helping you weed, rake, dig in the ground, push the wheelbarrow, and carry the soil and mulch.

Beyond stimulating our senses, gardening is a good outdoor activity for building up strength in our hands and upper body. By being creative, we can use a variety of muscles while taking care of some of the basic elements of gardening, like watering the growing plants.

Fun, unique ways to water the plants:

• Watering can: Using a full watering can is another example of “heavy work” and is good for upper body strengthening.
• Garden hose: Squeezing on the trigger with your whole hand is good for overall hand strengthening.
• Spray bottle: For small indoor or outdoor plants, use a smaller spray bottle and have your child squeeze using just the index and middle fingers, which will strengthen some of the smaller muscles with in the hand and promote separation of the thumb and pinky sides of the hand, which is an important pre-writing skill.
• Turkey baster: Squeezing and releasing on the top of the baster is good for building up the strength in the muscles of the hand and can be used to water small indoor or outdoor plants.

To keep gardening fun and avoid frustration, it is important to have good quality, child-sized tools. Tools can be sold as part of a set or individually and can be custom-made to fit your child’s size exactly (www.gardeningwithkids.org). Although lesser quality tools are fun for playing pretend, they are not suited for actual digging and raking.

Activities that rely on the use of gross muscle strength are a good preparation for fine motor activities, like writing, drawing, or cutting.

Blog written by:

Aviva Goldwasser, MS, OTR & Chaye Lamm-Warburg, MA, OTR, Director POTS

Last week’s blog highlighted the benefits of enjoying swings to provide vestibular input and improve skills. This week we will discuss another great outdoor activity that can promote balance, gross motor coordination, and rhymthicity.

Bike riding is a fun way for your child to get around and is a great social ice-breaker, but can be a challenging skill to learn. It requires the integration of vision with upper and lower body movements. The eyes must guide a safe path as the upper body steers and the lower body pedals rhythmically- – all while balancing.

For a beginner, start with a tricycle or a bike with training wheels for added stability. This will allow your child the opportunity to get the hang of the pedaling without also having to simultaneously balance. “Getting the feeling” of the movement is a first step in learning most motor skills. Once he is proficient at steering and pedaling, it is time to progress to a two-wheeler, and add the balance challenge.

To ensure maximum efficiency and to reduce the likelihood of injury, make sure that you purchase a bike that is well-suited to your child. Your local bike vendor will be able to guide you when choosing a bike as well as help fit the bike to your child’s individual size and preferences.

Please note: Children’s bikes are measured in wheel size (diameter) in contrast to adult bikes whose measurements refer to frame size.

A few general guidelines to keep in mind:

1. When standing over the frame with both feet flat on the ground, there should be 1-2 inches of clearance between your child and the tube of the frame.
2. Seat height should be set so that your child’s legs can extend almost completely straight, with slight bending at the knee when the foot is on the pedal in the bottom position. If your child can put his feet flat on the ground other than on tippy-toes while seated, the seat is too low.
3. The seat itself should be as level as possible to avoid sliding forward or slipping backward. You can also move the seat forward and backward in relation to the seat post.
4. The height of the handlebar should be at a level that feels comfortable to avoid straining the muscles of the back, shoulders, and wrists. Generally, the higher the handlebar, the more upright your child will sit.

Make realistic goals and allow your child to set the pace. At first, start with very short sessions so that your child does not become overly frustrated. Slowly increase the amount of time spent practicing. Take your cue from your child.

Begin on smooth, even terrain free of obstacles as your child learns to pedal. Allow him to get the feel for the rhythm of pedaling, increased speed, and cruising. Attempt an incline before a decline since it can be more unnerving to ride the brakes as the bike gains speed downhill. Depending on your child’s preference, bikes are widely available with either foot or hand brakes.

A good place to start is in a driveway, where the narrowness can help your child naturally steer straight ahead. Progress to an empty parking lot, where you can use cones to create a straight pathway before creating a more challenging obstacle course.

To become a proficient bike rider and learn to balance, have your child pick a point way ahead to focus on. This will ensure that his eyes look straight ahead rather than down, which will decrease the likelihood of falling and help your child steer safely away from obstacles.

Often a child’s biggest fear of bike riding is falling. To make your child feel more confident and less afraid, you can model falling off the bike in a safe way, and getting back up. Be sure to practice somewhere soft, like on the grass.

Safety comes first. Always remember to wear a helmet when riding a bike. As your child learns this new skill, you may be interested in purchasing arm and/or knee pads for added protection.

Information about bike sizing is from www.bicycling.about.com

Blog written by:

Aviva Goldwasser, MS, OTR

Chaye Lamm-Warburg, MA, OTR, Director POTS