Children with Down syndrome face a range of challenges. For example, they can struggle to sit on a chair or even button their shirt normally! This is due to the low tone and/or hypermobility in their wrists, elbows, or full hands. Occupational therapy for children extensively helps them improve their motor skills and boosts their confidence. Here are some occupational therapy activities for children with Down syndrome.
Occupational Therapy for Children
Musical instruments
Music can be a great way to build confidence in your child. You can use music to enhance their hand-to-eye coordination, grasping, and observation. Musical therapy is a proven way to help kids with Down syndrome. In the initial stages, occupational therapy for children can include simply allowing them to press different keys on a keyboard or just hit a drum. Try handing them instruments such as drum sticks to beat drums or a rattle as they progress. This will help them learn how to grasp things.
Sorting different items
Children love to organize according to their sense of things. This can become a great activity to engage one’s brain for complex tasks. You can give your child toys like cars, trucks, or even just some of the color-coded plates in your house. Once they can sort big items, you can move on to smaller and smaller items. Giving your child dry fruits and asking them to sort and eat is a great exercise for their mind. This would be good occupational therapy for children.
Playing with dough
Playing with dough is a great way to develop sensory skills to help kids develop ways to perform everyday tasks. The dough can be used to strengthen your child’s fingers and hands. Kneading dough, rolling it, and pressing it against a surface will be a great activity to help them coordinate their motor skills and strengthen their arms and fingers.
Stickers
Cartoon stickers are quite attractive to the eyes of the toddler. Peeling them off their backing and sticking them again is a nice way to engage them for some time. The effort to peel them properly is just as much as it takes to stick them up. Letting children with Down syndrome enjoy the joys of peeling and sticking stickers is a great occupational therapy technique.
For beginners, take off some parts of the stickers and let them peel off the remaining part with their strength. The exercise can be made difficult for kids with better skills by simply letting them peel the entire sticker themselves. Stickers can also be given as rewards to your child, who will be happy to be rewarded.
Posting games
Posting games teach coordination in children. You can start by providing a bright container and asking kids to put colored papers rolled into big rolls or use soft toys instead. They can be taught to put items in big containers and smaller toys in smaller containers as they progress. For more advanced levels, they can be given a choice to choose between multiple containers with different colored items to post together.
Games that teach shape sorting are a perfect activity under this category to teach shapes to kids with Down syndrome.
Building blocks games
Building anything requires steady and strong hands properly coordinated with eyes. Beginners can be given pillows, large books, or empty cans and asked to stack them on top of each other. As they progress, you can move to smaller and smaller cushions, and even Lego sets too. Using Lego sets trains their brains and strengthens their fingers and hands. Once they get good enough, challenge them to find things to stack on their own and see the results!
Conclusion
Occupational therapy for toddlers with Down syndrome is not an easy task by far. It takes a lot of patience and let kids figure things out on their own and let therapy take its course in strengthening their fingers and hands. Tip of the Tongue Rehab uses the best-proven techniques to deliver the best coordination and strength training to your child. To learn more about our occupational therapy for children with Down syndrome and how we can help, contact us today.
