﻿Hi everyone. My name is Aniesa and I'm an occupational therapist. I'm really looking forward to all the lessons that we're going to be doing together and I hope you are too. Before we get started, this is just a little reminder from us as therapists, that we are here to support any approaches that you might already be doing, or any work that you've already been set. We know that this lesson and all our other lessons are going to be watched by so many other children and families, so if you're not sure about anything or you have any questions, please contact your usual therapy team, Okay. I'm really looking forward to our lessons. So what is our core? What are our core muscles? So these are the muscles in our tummies, our chest, our neck, and our shoulders and they work together to hold our bodies upright. And that means that we can focus on using the rest of our body more carefully and accurately for other activities. As we get older, our core gets stronger, so we can do more with our hands, our feet and our eyes. If you have a weak core, what does that look like? So you may slump like a noodle on the table or on the floor. You may find that you struggle to use your arms and control your legs. You might get quite tired quite quickly and playing or working or going to school, just feel a little bit more difficult for you. Right, I want you to pause the video now, to get everything that you're going to need. Okay, clear a space, have a nice comfortable surface, and then get a timer or an adult to count the seconds you're going to do. Restart once you're done. Our first activity is called Silly Bug. That sounds quite funny, doesn't it? So how you do this is you lie on your back, you cross your arms over your chest, you touch your shoulders, and you lift your legs up behind, and bend your knees at right angles. So, it looks a little bit like a chair from the side, as you can see there. You're going to lift your head up, tuck your chin to your chest, and you're going to see how long you can do that for.

Going to start by lying on your back, Your hands on the side, okay. You want your legs to be raised, you can cross your angles if you want, you don't have to, and then, your arms, you can cross your chest and bring your head up. And you want to see what number you can get to when you're counting out loud, okay. We don't want to and struggle like that, because that means its to hard for you. If you can manage this, that's also good, okay. Now pause that video and try Silly Bug. Our next activity is called Superman, and there loads of different ways to do this. Let's see how I did it in the video. I wanted you to lift it all up, like that and count, one, two, three, see how high you can count, okay, or you can have your hands there and again we're going to in one movement, lift up, and count, okay, if you find that you are straining or struggling to count, then you stop, okay. Right, so pause the video now and try Superman. Remember to see how long you can hold it for. For some of us this can be really difficult to do for such a long time. So I would say, try sitting to do some work at the table as a warmup. If you're finding these really hard, it's absolutely fine to just lift up your upper body first, or just lift up your lower body. Try and increase by say a second every day. And later on you'll see some fun activities that we can do while we're in these positions. Remember, do the best for you. Don't worry about what your friends can do. Practise, practise, practise, thank you for listening. If you'd like, please ask your parents or your carer to share your work, on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging at Oak National and hashtag Learn with Oak. I'll see you soon, guys.

In this lesson, we will build understanding of weak gross motor skills and work towards developing a super strong core to help us for activities in daily life, school and play.

In this lesson, we will build understanding of weak gross motor skills and work towards developing a super strong core to help us for activities in daily life, school and play. Resources provided by University of Gloucestershire (CC BY-NC-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0)

Lesson overview:Super Strong Core

Core Content

Gross motor skills: