If you’re looking for some fun, pediatric therapy activities to try over the Easter break, look no further.
Our Swim Lab International team love using seasonal holidays to inspire new therapy-based activities and games to help our children develop their abilities in an enjoyable way.
We’ve pulled together three eggceptional Easter activities with hidden therapeutic benefits, helping your child to naturally work on skills from bilateral coordination and hand dexterity to motor planning, balance and more.
Let’s hop to it!
Paint the easter eggs
This simple classic is a lot of fun for children of all ages and abilities. We recommend either using traditional hard-boiled eggs or the styrofoam versions you usually find in craft shops for a low price.
This activity’s a great opportunity for your child to explore their creative side, making colourful patterns or even painting bunnies, chicks or funny faces. It’s also going to allow him or her to work on their hand-eye coordination, hand and finger dexterity, grip and more.
If brushes are a challenge to hold, you can use sponges with different textures to stamp on a design, offering tactile stimulation as well as being easier to practice gripping. You can also try finger painting with different fingers on each hand, or using the brush to splatter paint across the eggs in various colours for a different effect. Whichever option you choose, try using each hand in turn for even more of a challenge.
If your child loves getting hands-on, you can also try creating decoupage eggs. You’ll need tissue paper in various colours, and decoupage glue which can be made by mixing 3 parts white glue with 1 part water. First, have your child tear the tissue paper into small strips and rectangles. Next, he or she needs to brush or sponge glue onto the egg, lay the paper, and add another layer of glue on top to seal it in. Build up layers of tissue paper for a colourful design, and let the egg dry.
Want to sneak in some practice for core stability or body balance? Your child can easily do these activities high-kneeling or standing at a table.
Egg balance obstacle course
This is such a great activity for developing a multitude of skills including hand-eye coordination, motor planning, visual perception and balance. It’s also a lot of fun and a challenge that all your children to enjoy!
Hide coloured painted boiled eggs (like the ones you made above!) or plastic eggs around the house or garden and give your children a spoon and a basket each.
The basket stays in the same place and your children have to find the eggs and pick them up with the spoon (if that’s too tricky they can place it on the spoon) and then walk back to their basket without dropping the egg.
If your child finds the spoon too much of a challenge, try a soup ladle instead.
Sounds easy so far, right? Well, we wanted to throw in an extra challenge, so we’ll make more of an obstacle course using pillows, chairs, broom handles or string which they have to duck under or climb or jump over.
You can also have them crawl under a table or have a square marked out with masking tape or chalk where they have to spin in a circle or swap hands before they can carry on. When they collect all the eggs they get chocolate ones to replace them.
Egg challenge
This is a fun Easter activity that the whole family can take part in, including you Mum and Dad!
We suggest hard-boiled or plastic eggs for this one!
Fill a bucket with pieces of paper with simple activities like run, jump, stand on one foot, hop, spin in a circle, sit on the floor, do a Mexican wave etc.
Fill another bucket with pieces of paper with as many different ways to hold an egg as you can think of, like between your wrists, under your chin, in your elbow, under your armpit, on your head, between your ankles and so on.
Each player has to take a piece of paper from each bowl and combine the two, like “jump” with the “egg between your ankles”. If they don’t drop the egg they keep it, if they do it goes back in with the rest. The player with the most eggs wins a prize.
This is a great challenge to develop so many skills including balance, coordination, motor planning, core strength and gross motor skills.
We hope we’ve inspired you with ways to change up your regular home therapy routine and include the whole family.
Looking for more fun therapy ideas to try at home? Check out our earlier blog post with three fun therapy activities you can do today.
