Core Strength
Definition: Core strength is strength within the trunk which lays the foundation for all fine and gross motor skills. It also plays a significant role in the ability to learn.
The impacts of core strength include:
Establishing and Maintaining Attention: Core strength allows a child to focus and attend while learning, as less effort is needed to control and maintain one’s body.
Visual Perception: Core strength helps to provide stability through the head and neck to allow the eyes to take in accurate visual information for visual processing. Weak core strength often correlates with weak eye muscles and difficulty with eye coordination skills.
Static/ Stationary Balance Skills: Core strength provides the stability for the arms and legs to develop coordinated movement skills. It is also the foundation for balance skills such as standing on one foot
Body Awareness and Regulation: Core strength provides the foundation needed for us to know where our body is in space and it allows us to move with purposeful and controlled movements. It provides the stability that allows a student to sit in his/ her chair without wiggling or falling out of the chair. It also helps with body regulation, allowing the student to focus and attend
Breath Support: Needed for talking and breathing efficiently
Foundation: It gives the students the underlying strength needed to move, write, hold their body up against gravity, and develop normally
Gross Motor Activities to Do At Home that Promote Core Strength
- Hopping on 1 foot/Standing on 1 foot- how many times/seconds can you do it? Use a chair or tabletop to hang onto if needed for support
- Jumping: up/down, forward/backward, sideways, over a small pillow or on/off of a rug
- Walking, running, rolling up/down a hill slow, fast, forward, backward, sideways etc.
- Play outside: go for a walk, ride a bike, trike or scooter
- Run/walk up a hill and then log roll down the hill
- Animal Walks: Bear, seal, crab, frog jump, duck, worm, wheelbarrow walk
- Kicking, throwing, catching, rolling, bounce/catch, and dribbling a ball
- Hitting/catching a balloon with different body parts or a shortened swim noodle
- Blowing bubbles and popping them with different body parts
- Help with chores: Sweeping the floor, Vacuuming, Carry filled laundry baskets to room, clearing the table, wash windows, help carry in groceries
- Dance to music
- Read a book, play a game or puzzle lying on stomach, tall kneeling, on their hands and knees
- "Stack em up and knock em down": Use cardboard boxes, cereal boxes or 2 liter plastic pop bottles. Have your child stack them or set them up and then have them knock them over by using hands, kicking them, log rolling into them or throwing a ball or pair of rolled up socks at them.
- Yoga, exercise videos/movement songs on youtube
- Swimming
- Go to a park/play on playground equipment
- Belly/commando crawl or crawl through tunnels or over pillows
Core exercises on a yoga ball
Walk out/in - Push-ups- Reaching
Walk-Outs: Lay on your stomach and walk out on long arms, slowly and not letting your belly sag, maintaining balance, walk back in slowly
Push-ups: Lay on your stomach, walk out slowly to where you are able to keep balance, do 10 push-ups, and walk back in slowly
Reaching: Lay on your stomach, walk out a little way, keeping your balance
- Raise one arm- hold to count of 5, then the other; Raise one leg-hold to count of 5, then the other
- Raise right arm and left leg- hold to count of 5; Raise left arm, right leg-hold to count of 5
- Raise right arm, right leg-hold to count of 5; raise left arm, left leg-hold to count of 5
Crab Walking
Keep body flat and bottom pulled up and stomach tight
- Walk forward, backward and sideways
- Walk over grass, sand, up hills etc.
- Increases core strength, balance, motor planning and body awareness
Stretching out over a ball
- Slowly rock back and forth over ball on stomach to stretch out back
- Lay on back and do the same thing
- Stretch with arms above head and out to the side
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