Gross motor activities are a vital part of a preschool program. Any occupational therapist will tell you that a child cannot be expected to develop fine motor skills, without having gross motor skills in place. Here are 6 easy to set up, minimum equipment gross motor activities with a large group.
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I had a class of twenty four 5 year olds last year, and these were some of the gross motor activities we did. Above we used the hoola hoops. We made a long line and jumped in different ways in them: two feet in one hula, one feet at a time, alternating legs etc. We placed the hulas in patterns, according to colour and size. We rolled the hulas, jumped through them and tried to hula hoop too!
We used the outside equipment and made an obstacle course. I used chalk to mark off the route they had to follow. There were balancing, crawling, climbing, running, hopping & skipping and walking backwards opportunities.
When the weather was not ideal to be outside, we made a gross motor station in class: jumping 10 times on the trampoline, walking the balancing plank, doing roly poly’s, jumping in the hula hoops. (This was with a group of 5/6 at a time, using my Group Rotation Method.)
Sometimes we would use the big gym balls to roll to each other, or bounce on it on the carpet.
The above pic shows you the chalk shapes I drew for jumping and counting. We also used a bean bag: calling a number or shape and someone has to throw the bean bag in the correct shape.
Follow the leader is a fun game, and doing it while having to balance on tyres are so much fun!
And lastly, we held a “sport day”. The whole school participated, around 150 kids. They were divided into three groups, and we played games like bag racing, spoon racing, three legged races, cart wheel races etc. each team got points when participated at each station. Resulting in all the children participating and everyone were winners!
Fun activities for large groups to work on the ever important gross motor skills!
Emma Henderson says
I love these ideas, especially the outside obstacle course.