Crawling ideas for home

Content of video (Crawling ideas for home):

Hi everyone! I’m Janell and I’m a paediatric physiotherapist. As the majority of us are currently stuck at home, due to the covid-19 lockdown, I’ve decided to share some ideas with parents who have young kids at home, who are presently, unable to receive any hands-on therapy. These are some suggestions that I have found worked well with young children, in my 20 years of treating them.

 

I am now going to share my screen, so that you will be able to see my slides. What I will be presenting today, will be some crawling ideas for home.

 

Who is this video for?

This video has been made for parents with kids who have just started crawling independently on their hands and knees, for eg:

• Toddlers with gross motor delay (who need to practise their crawling skills)
• Young kids with low tone (who need motivation to crawl), and also,
• Typically developing kids below 12 months of age

 

For kids who are not yet crawling, on a later slide, I will have some specific pre-crawling ideas on what you can do to facilitate crawling.

 

Benefits of Crawling

Before I start suggesting some ideas that parents can do at home, let me run through the benefits of crawling, of why we should be encouraging our young kids to crawl.

• Crawling helps to develop muscles in the head, neck, arms, back and legs. Developing strength and stability at their shoulders is important because it allows them to have control of their hands for other skills later on, such as feeding, dressing or writing.
• It also helps the right and left sides of their body to work together for improved coordination.
• It teaches kids body awareness in space, so they know where they are and how to maneuver around their environment.
• Crawling helps to develop their balance and sensory system, and this
• allows for independent exploration, which enhances their cognition and problem solving skills.

 

Tunnels

Tunnels are a fun way to encourage kids to crawl, which is why you would see at least 1 tunnel in any therapy centre. You can make crawling through a tunnel more enticing by having your kid’s favourite toys placed randomly throughout the tunnel.

If you do not have a tunnel at home, you can use cardboard boxes opened at both ends and placed sideways on the floor, as seen in picture 2. Again, you can have your kid’s favourite toys throughout the tunnel. Or you can stick various objects in different colours and textures on the floor or walls of the box, to attract your child to crawl through. You can even hang tinsels, or strings of beads from the ceiling of the cardboard box to make the box even more attractive.

 

If cardboard boxes are hard to come by, you can even just line up a row of dining chairs, side by side, and encourage your child to crawl under the row of chairs, as in picture 3.

 

Ball Pit

A ball pit is another fun place for kids to crawl through. A good starting point would be to have just a single layer of balls in the ball pit (because you do not want to lose your child in a deep ball pit!). You can use a blow-up kiddie swiiming pool as a ball pit.

And instead of just placing your kid inside the ball pit, encourage your kid to crawl into and out of the ball pit on his own. Having to figure out how to do it on his own, will improve his problem solving skills.

 

If you do not have a ball pit, or a collapsible swimming pool, you can just use a luggage bag, or a low box, and coax your kid to crawl in and out of it.

 

Up & Down

Crawling up and down large, sturdy cushions is a good way to build strength, balance, coordination and problem solving skills. You can start with encouraging crawling up just 1 cushion. Crawling up is always easier than crawling down a step. The safest way to crawl down a step would be with the feet first, instead of face down first, to prevent any faceplant onto the ground. You may need to help turn your kid around before they crawl down, so that they learn to crawl down with their feet first.

 

If your kid finds this too easy, you can space out the cushions in a row, and have your kid crawl up and down each cushion, as he reaches for a toy.

 

To challenge your kid, you can stack the cushions up, so that they form a 2, or even 3-step cushion stairs.

 

Over

Having your child crawl over objects is another way to promote problem-solving skills. You can very simply use a rolled up towel, and encourage your child to crawl over the roll. You can also sit long-legged on the floor, and encourage your kid to crawl over your legs to reach the opposite side.

I added in this picture of the arched ladder, because I thought it was really cool that such a young kid was using her problem-solving skills to work out how to climb over to the opposite side.

 

Different textures

This slide shows the different surfaces you can use to entice your kid to crawl. Having different textures also promotes sensory awareness. Some examples of the different surfaces would be tin foil, plastic sheets, carpet or towels, bubble wrap, or anything else you can think of. The last picture gives further examples of what you can use. You can either stick them onto gym mats like in the last picture, or you can make sensory bags and stick them onto the ground. I will explain more about sensory bags in my next slide.

 

Sensory Bags

These are some examples of sensory bags. These bags are very motivating for a child to explore. They are also very good for kids with sensory issues, because the kid gets to explore what is in the bag, without getting the contents onto his hands.

Picture 1 shows a store-bought water mat, with foam pieces in it. However, sensory bags are very easily made with things you have around your home.

In picture 2, shows ziplock bags filled with either water, oil or gel, and have pom-poms, or cut-out shapes/ glitter added into the bags.

Picture 3 shows a sensory bag that simulates a lava lamp, and it is filled with oil and food dye.

Picture 4 shows different coloured dough in ziplock bags. You can make the dough by mixing flour, water, salt and food dye.

 

Fillers for sensory bags

This shows examples of fillers you can use in your sensory bags:

You can fill up the sensory bags with edible stuff you have at home such as: Rice or pasta, popcorn or potato chips, salt, flour, or inedible objects such as beads, shaving foam, buttons, leaves, crumpled paper, water beads, baby oil/food dye/glitter, or anything else you can think of. A good number of bags to present at each session is 2-3 bags, not too many such that your kid is overwhelmed with all the choices, and doesn’t spend enough time on each bag to fully explore the contents.

I have found these bags to be very effective in enticing a kid to crawl. You can have your kid crawl up to each bag top explore it, or you can make bigger sensory bags, and have your child crawl over them.

 

Pre-crawling ideas

If your child is not yet crawling, you may want to encourage some of these activities instead:

Lots more tummy time, focusing on weight-bearing through the arms. You can encourage tummy time by placing your child over your extended legs, or gentle bouncing on a gym ball.

Then move on to weight-bearing through the hands and knees by encourage 4-point kneeling over a roll (you can use a rolled-up towel for this).

You can also try wheelbarrow walking on hands, bu lifting your child’s hips and legs off the ground, and have his body weight on his hands, and encouraging him to walk forward on his hands to reach a toy.

There are other pre-crawling ideas, that are too many to mention here, but i hope this is a good start.

 

Connect with Me

I hope those of you who watched this video have found it useful, and are inspired to try out some of the ideas with your kids at home. If you have any questions, or would like to connect with me, you can find me on FB under Kidzphysio Singapore (kidz with a z, instead of an s). Or you can contact me via my email or cellphone as shown in this last slide.

Please take care everyone. Stay safe and healthy! Bye-bye!

 

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