Locomotor activities for kids involve just that, locomotor skills. These skills can simply be thought of as a way of moving your body from one place to another. For example, walking is a locomotor skill and so is skipping, galloping or jogging. In all of these examples, your body is moving from one place to another. Below are some ideas for implementing these locomotor activities.
Locomotor Activities For Kids
Think back to your elementary gym classes of the 90’s. Do you remember lining up on one end of the gym and skipping or galloping to the other end? This is one way that you can work on locomotor skills.
That being said, we can make it a little more fun. Here are some ways that you can practice locomotor skills and make it fun.
Scavenger Hunts – Use different locomotor skills to move from one object to the other. This is an awesome way to work on locomotor skills at all levels. I’ve done scavenger hunts with higher level locomotor skills such as skipping to working on scavenger hunts with kiddos using a gait trainer.
Obstacle Courses – Walk heel to toe or skip between obstacles. Up your game a little more and add obstacles like rolling the ball around a cone or adding footprints to an agility ladder!
You can get these footprints in the Pink Oatmeal freebie library.
Using Sensory/Motor Stops – Set up and entire course dedicated to working on different locomotor skills, but place different sensory/motor stops in between. You can even make these seasonal or to go with a holiday!
Playground Game Format – Remember some of the old school games like red light, green light? This is a great opportunity to play with locomotor skills instead.
Game Format – Pink Oatmeal has a new section of games all dedicated to locomotor skills. There are both digital and printable games. The most popular right now – Locomotor Bingo!
Painter’s Tape or Chalk – Draw any sort of line and practice locomotor skills while moving along the line.
The digital games can be played on a computer or tablet. They are really awesome if you play them on an interactive whiteboard or have the ability to screencast them onto a larger screen!
Non-Locomotor Skills
So we know what locomotor skills are, what would be a non-locomotor skill? Something like balancing on one leg or a wall sit would be a non-locomotor skill. In these activities you are not moving your body from one place to another.
Locomotor Activities for Kids Resources
Pink Oatmeal has a large collection of locomotor games and activities for kids. You are guaranteed your kids will love these games and so will you.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE LOCOMOTOR ACTIVITY GAMES FOR KIDS FROM PINK OATMEAL
Below are a few of my favorite locomotor activities. Click on the NAME of the resource below to see the full details.
