Obstacle Course Ideas for Gross Motor Movement & Sensory Input
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My oldest son has autism and both of my boys have sensory processing disorders so we incorporate a lot of messy play and activity into our schedules! Below is just a sample of our day of obstacle courses with plenty of ideas for you to make your own!
After we did our Painting the Bullseye and Fling a Bean fine motor skills activities we went out to the front yard to do some obstacle courses. Obstacle courses don’t have to fancy or expensive – in fact the best ones are free! Especially right now around the holidays budgets are stretched pretty tightly. So today we stayed home and came up with a lot of fun activities to do. We did several different obstacle courses but here are a few things that we included:
Painting the Bullseye = squirting paint out of a medicine dropper onto a bullseye target outside
Fling a Bean = scooping up paint covered beans with a spoon and flinging them at a target outside
Obstacle Course Ideas we Used:
- PUSHING a BROOM (great for resistance)
2. JUMPING ON A TRAMPOLINE
3. RUNNING
4. CRAWLING THROUGH A TUBE ($15 at IKEA)
5. BOUNCING ON A BALL TO THE HULA HOOP
6. CRABWALK
7. WHEELBARROW RACES
8. HOPPING ON ONE FOOT
9. THROWING OBJECTS INSIDE THE HULA HOOP
More Obstacle Course Ideas:
Here are a few other ideas depending on the age of your children to add to your obstacle course:
- jump rope
- skipping
- hula hoop
- rolling a hula hoop to a specific location
- bean bag throw
- crawling over things like pillows or boxes
- carrying a heavy book bag or object
- carrying an egg on a spoon
- biking/skating around something
- pulling a wagon
- pushing a heavy crate
Obstacle Course Prizes:
We bought a small bag of water beads
– when you drop them into water they get bigger and turn into little bouncy balls (on the right)! So when they were finished with the obstacle course they could pick out which color ball(s) they wanted to drop into the water and watch them grow. Not only was this activity VERY inexpensive but it helped with their fine motor and gross motor skills as well!
– when you drop them into water they get bigger and turn into little bouncy balls (on the right)! So when they were finished with the obstacle course they could pick out which color ball(s) they wanted to drop into the water and watch them grow. Not only was this activity VERY inexpensive but it helped with their fine motor and gross motor skills as well!
