Sensory Exercises at Home Series

This series of “Sensory exercises at Home”, all the story boards and animations are prepared by the SEN youth from our Center. They are sharing what they think is fun and helpful. Parents can easily do these exercises with their children at home.

Parents can help their children in this exercise. When you start doing this, please start slow. There is no need to rush. Slowly, encourage your children to complete the exercise on their own.

Parents can demonstrate this exercise for their children, or modify it to suit their capability. Adjust the difficulty and speed where necessary. There is no need make this exercise challenging. The most important thing is to: “Have fun safely.” If the children can complete the entire sequence by themselves, remember to praise them for their effort. Parents’ approval and encouragement are key in the children’s development.

1^st episode – Forward Lunge and Muscle Stretch – Let’s Stretch Our Legs and Ankles

Vestibular, proprioception and tactile are the 3 main sensory pillars that allow us to connect with our surroundings.

Vestibular system provides us with a sense of balance and spatial orientation; proprioception is a sensory information from our muscles that guides our actions; tactile is our sense of touch.

Training purpose:

1. To increase strength and flexibility in the muscles and joints area
2. To reduce risk of injury caused by muscle strains.
3. To be used as a warm-up and cool-down exercise when doing any sports.

Suitable for kids of age 3 and above

Sensory integration exercise focus:

1. Muscles – stretch out the main muscles along the thigh and calf area to improve muscle elasticity
2. Ankle joints – strengthen knees and ankle joints and tendons to avoid sprains and pulls.

2nd episode – Forward Lunge and Muscle Stretch – Let’s Jump

Vestibular system is one of the key sensory systems in our bodies. It affects how we react to our surroundings. It is an important part in our physical and mental development.

Unfortunately, sensory dysfunction will not go away with age. We can maintain a better body balance through the various sensory stimulating exercises. Without balance, our children could easily trip and fall, or could bump into obstacles at home, hurting themselves.

Parents can help their children to improve their balance by doing these exercises regularly with them at home

Training purpose:

1. To improve the balance and agility of SEN children in order to reduce the chance of them falling.
2. To strengthen thigh and calf muscles and activate muscles at the soles of the feet.

Suitable age: over 3 years old

Sensory integration exercise focus:

1. Small muscles – improve the balance by training the muscles at the soles of the feet.
2. Feet and ankle joints – increase flexibility and balance by strengthening the knees and ankle tendons
3. Main muscles-
   a. Lower leg muscles – calf muscles are the main muscles in the lower legs.
   b. Main upper arm and shoulder muscles
   c. Back shoulder muscles
4. Maintaining the balance – balance the body before and after jumps

3rd episode – Forward Lunge and Muscle Stretch – Let’s Hop

Proprioception disorder affects the ability of self-care. Something as simple as walking or pick up the bowls and fork to eat could be difficult for our children. Learning how to write is the most challenging task of all.

Through strengthening the main muscles in the hands, feet and entire body. And training the small muscles around the limbs can help our children to learn the ability of self-care. Joints and tendons exercises can improve coordination and flexibility of hands and feet and will greatly reduce the chance of falling and injuries.

Parents can easily do this exercise at home with their children to help improve the leg muscles and strength.

Training purpose:
Improve the agility and walking balance of SEN children, reduce the chance of falling, and improve the strength of the thighs, calf muscles and soles of the feet

Suitable age: over 3 years old

Sensory integration exercise focus:

1. Activate the small muscles on the soles of the feet to improve balance.
2. Strengthen the ankle tendons by balancing standing on one foot.
3. Train the main thigh and calf muscles while hopping
4. Work on the arm muscles and shoulder joints on both arms when swinging them during the hop or jump

4th episode – Forward Lunge and Muscle Stretch – Frog’s Jump

The key function of vestibular system is to receive sensory information through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch, identify and process them, before passing it to our brains.

Vestibular system is an integral part of children’s development. It is the first gate to all these sensory information and allows our brains to focused on other things.

Sensory integration exercises can improve the coordination between the brain and the body and limbs.

Sensory training is a long, continuous process. SEN children must regularly exercise and stretch their muscles and joints, to help them to balance. These exercises are repeated everyday and we need to do them regularly.

Parents can easily make use of anything at home and create these fun exercises with their children. All these exercises are created by our team of SEN youth.

This game is called “Frog’s Jump”

Step 1: Creating obstacles

Parents need to find some common some household items and put them on the floor as obstacles. These items should be soft and small, with the height of one foot or below. Some examples are: toilet rolls, towels, tissue boxes. Please do not use any hard or sharp-edge items.

Step 2: Jumping over the obstacles
In the beginning, you can jump over the objects with your feet together. Or you can also straddle across them with one leg.

Step 3: Making it more challenging
For example, placing the obstacles in a “S” shape path. Or asking the children to name to objects or describe the color of it before jumping over the obstacles.

Step 4: Clean Up

Since all these items are taken from home. At the end of this game, we can get the children to help putting them back, in order to train their memories too.
Parents can easily take any topics from everyday life. And create games with the children.

There is no time limit for each exercise or game. The goal is to allow the children to enjoy the process of creating the games and doing them.

5th episode – Forward Lunge and Muscle Stretch – Making Seaweed and Egg Roll

The purpose of this game is to increase the coordination of the upper body and the tactile sensation by rolling our bodies in a towel or blanket. Since this game resembles “seaweed and egg roll”, that’s how our SEN children came up with the name for this game.

Step 1:
Spread a long towel or quilt on the bed.
Lay down at the edge on one end, and stretch out the legs and feet.

Step 2:
Cross your arms in front of your chest.
Try to roll over the entire body.

Step 3:
Practise rolling back and forth on bed with arms crossed.

Step 4:
Next time when you roll, hold onto a corner of the towel or the the blanket with one hand.
As you roll over, take the towel or blanket with you. Roll all the way to the end, and then roll back to release.