When playtimes are tricky

Sensory integration

﻿In today's lesson, we're going to learn about the visual things and about play times, because sometimes play times can be tricky when our eyes find it really hard tracking across the playground and we're trying to find our friends and we really cannot do that. So we're going to share a few ideas how to make this easier today. We as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out at home or in school. This information is to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources which have been given by your child's school or therapist. If you have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please contact your local therapy service. This lesson involves the option to play games involving physical activity. Please ensure the area is safe and that your learner is feeling fit and well before taking part in these activities. Please also be careful when doing these activities to avoid any harm. So, playtime. In today's lesson, we will learn about when our visual system makes playtime tricky. We're going to play quite a few eye games. So keeping track of where your friends are when you're playing active thing, games can be hard. What I mean by that is when we play tag or any kind of chasing game, especially when it's on a playground or outside in a park. And sometimes, it can also be hard to play card games when you have to match pictures, especially if you have to do it very quickly. That can be hard if your visual sense is not as quick as following other kind of visual tracking and following information around the playground. So tips to help with some chase games and with board games is you can play things like What's the time Mr. Wolf? Duck, duck, goose, And the nice thing about this is that these are tag games with some boundaries. So you have a beginning point and you have an end point. It just means that you don't have to run around the whole playground, but there's actually a defined place where you run to. So it makes it easier for your eyes to track and for your eyes to see where people are and what they doing. With board games, instead of playing fast matching games, you can play games like memory card games, or word building games, where you have to do a lot of thinking, but you don't, you're not timed and therefore it doesn't have to be a very quick game, which is sometimes harder for our eyes to adjust to different pictures on a card game. And the same goes for ball games. Playing slower and more predictable ball games is easier than playing something like football or even netball. So playing things where you stand in a row like Piggy-in-the-middle, is a great game that is a bit slower and a bit more predictable. Playing something like Donkey is another fun game, where you stand in a circle and one person throws the ball to another person, so it's more predictable. And when you can't catch it, then you start to spell out the word donkey, and so on. So these are just some tips to help you when your eyes find it really hard to track. So let's find out what else we can do. So we're going to play some games together now. So first of all, here's a little game where you can try and spot the five differences. So I'm going to give you a little bit of time to have a look at the screen and see if you can spot the differences. And then we may have a go at looking at this together. So, have a look. Oh, let me see I'm going to have a look too. Ah, I'm just going to point out a few of these and then maybe what you can do with your parent and carer, you can pose on this slide and then when you're ready, you can move on to the next one. The, one of the differences that I can see is that there's a little cloud over the sun on the one picture and on the other picture, there isn't the cloud. So have a look and see if you can find four other differences on this picture. And once you've finished, once you've found them all, move on to the next slide. Now, here we're going to play a few active games. So ask your parent or carer, and your family to join in with these ones. So the first game that we're going to play is a game of Duck, duck, goose. So, I'm going to read our instructions for you so you can know how to play this game. So all the players sit withe crossed legs in a circle on the ground facing each other. One player is selected as the runner to start the game. The runner taps people on the head or shoulder saying "duck, duck, duck,..." until late choose someone to be the goose. And then they will say, "duck, duck, duck goose!" Once they touch your head, the goose gets up and chases around the runner and tries to catch him or her. The runner is safe if he or she can run around the circle once and sit down in the same place where the goose sat down. The goose is now the runner and repeats the game. This game you can play indoors or outdoors or on a lawn or on a blanket. And it's a really fun game to play. And it really helps us with tracking because it's quite predictable. Another fun game that you and your family can play together is the game of What's the time Mr. Wolf? So What's the time Mr. Wolf? in this version, the sheep and the Wolf stand a few metres apart. The sheep all stand in a row next to each other. And the sheep all ask, "Wolf, wolf, what time is it?" If the Wolf says "It's five o'clock," for example, the sheep must take five steps towards the Wolf. If the Wolf says "two o'clock," then they should take two steps and so on. The wolf stands with his or her back to the sheep to make the catch a surprise. However, it may happen that some of the sheep will move centimetres forward while others will take very large steps forward. When the Wolf calls "It's lunchtime!" the Wolf quickly turns around and he tries to catch one of the sheep as they try and run forwards to the other side. Have a go at playing What's the time Mr. Wolf? with your family. So pause the video here and have a go first, and then we will resume the lesson once you've done it. Great! That's really good. So I hope that you are going to really enjoy playing these two games. Playing Duck, duck, goose, and playing What's the time Mr. Wolf? So once you've finished, just a reminder, again, play, press the play button, and then we will carry on with the lesson. Here's a few more ideas for you. You can play more games with tag games with boundaries. You know, What's the time Mr. Wolf? Duck, duck, goose, which we've just played then, and I hope you had fun with them. See if you can think of a few more games that happens in a circle, or that happens where there's some boundaries that you can play. With board games instead of really fast matching games, you can play card games that use a dice, or you can play board games, where you have to kind of go around a board and moving things forwards like snakes and ladders, for example. Which is a bit slower and it also helps your eyes to track. Instead of a tennis ball, you could use a larger and a softer ball, you could use a balloon, which will float slower through the air than a ball will travel. Or if you want to, you can use a ball with a little bell inside, and that will kind of really help your visual sense as well because your ears will be playing along as well. So here's a few ideas to kind of help with visual tracking and helping with play times. So I hope you've had fun today finding a board or card game to play, and really look forward to kind of hearing kind of what games you found out and what other games you can contribute to play with us. So, just a reminder to please share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to please ask your parents or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. It's been great to do this lesson with you. We will see you soon.

When playtimes are tricky

When playtimes are tricky

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