I have this great set of tents connected by a crawl-through tunnel, and the children who come to my therapy gym already love crawling through it.
To add a bit of a game element to it, and also with a specific child in mind who loves numbers, I put a foam numbers puzzle in one of the tents, and took out the numbers and put them in the other of the tents.
I challenged the children to race against the timer to see how fast they could grab numbers, crawl through the tunnel, put the numbers in the puzzle, crawl back, grab more numbers…etc!
I’m not the type of person to be super structured in games, or uphold the rules very well. I’m much more flexible and end up going with the kid’s ideas about how to change the game or make up new, fun rules, because I love that creativity. So, all the kids who wanted to grab as many puzzle pieces as they could at once, or tried tucking them into their shirt and holding it like a basket while they crawled, or whatever…I just went with it, because that’s my style. 🙂
Crawling and holding self up on all fours is an important skill and strengthening activity. It makes the joints stronger and more stable, and develops the core and trunk muscles, which in turn improves fine motor skills—yes, even like writing.
