Has your child told you about bear crawling, sight word hopscotching, balancing on bamboo, koi fish hops, flower pushups, or walking on a snake? As weird as that sounds, all of these things are happening at STM!
As you know, STM is committed to not only nurturing your child spiritually and academically, but also physically and emotionally. This includes the opportunity to go into the hallway and spend some time on our sensory paths!
What is the benefit of these? Let’s break it down:
Infinity Snake
The infinity snake helps children specifically by building muscle memory, increasing focus and concentration skills, developing attention skills while performing a task, increasing communication between the two sides of the brain, and works on coordination and balance.
Bear Crawl with Social/Emotional Log Jumps
Bear crawling is a great way for children to develop bilateral and contralateral coordination skills. Add in jumping over logs that remind you to take a deep breath, wiggle your sillies out, and give yourself a big hug, and by the end of this sensory path, the children feel renewed in mind and body!
Bamboo Balance Beam
The bamboo balance beam requires children to plan their movement through zigzags of bamboo shoots, placing one foot in front of the other. This activity is amazing for practicing coordination skills, increasing hand, foot, and eye coordination, and developing body awareness.
Koi Fish Hops
The Koi fish are in the middle of the lily pad hops–and students must match the feet to make sure they are facing in the correct direction each time they do bilateral jumps! This activity challenges students not only to hop, but to do so in different directions, causing them to pause to plan out their movements.
Wall Pushes (Books and Flowers)
Wall push ups are an amazing way to provide children with a sense of body awareness and to detect or control the force and pressure on our muscles and joints. This helps to regulate sensory processing in children and adults! Wall pushups stimulate the nervous system and reset the brain signals to the right places in the body.
Sight Word Paths and Hopscotch
We all know that everyone learns differently and perhaps you have heard of kinesthetic learners–those that learn through movement and actually DOING something. This opportunity to practice the most common sight words in reading while playing hopscotch or following a prescribed path provide those learners with an active session of learning–and provide everyone with a quick sight word review as they walk down the hallway.
Sensory Paths are not new, but they continue to improve with the neurodevelopmental stimulation and regulation that children find helpful and need. Ask your child if they’ve used any of the Sensory Paths at STM yet. I’ve seen some 7th and 8th graders walking the infinity snake….