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Utilising Gross Motor Movement to Boost your Connection in your Community

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UTILISING GROSS MOTOR MOVEMENT TO BOOST YOUR CONNECTION TO YOUR COMMUNITY

Finding something you are interested in and engaging in your community is a vital step in enhancing your wellbeing and your overall health! Using your whole body through gross motor movement not only builds your confidence to explore the world around you, but also provides motivation to use your body in new and exciting ways, like going for bush walks, playing a team or individual sport or playing at a park with other local children.

What are gross motor skills?

By definition, gross motor skills are the physical abilities acquired during early childhood, those which require whole body movement such as standing up, walking or running.

Gross motor skills develop through the use of large muscles in the body in a controlled and organised manner including the torso, arms and legs to complete whole body movements. Skills involve both the coordination of muscles and the neurological system in the body. The development of these skills impact balance, coordination, body awareness, physical strength, endurance and reaction time. They are developed through experience, practice and repetition during everyday life and impact upon confidence and the execution of further skills such as; walking, running, skipping, sitting, jumping, hopping, hand-eye coordination (catching a ball), dressing, bathing, feeding oneself and even academic skills such as the ability to sit at a desk, manage a full day of school or carry a heavy school bag. 

Children need to be exposed to a range of diverse opportunities in order to move freely and practice their gross motor skills, with each skill building on the one before and preparing your child for the next challenge. They are a vital part of childhood development for movement during daily activities and also provide a stable base for the development of fine motor activities, such as writing. As a child continues to develop their gross motor skills and overall body awareness, their self-esteem and confidence grows, allowing them to explore the world around them, interact socially and develop relationships. Check out our previous blog on gross motor skills that further breaks down the development of these skills.

Why are gross motor skills important?

Gross motor skills are just the beginning of many other skills and motor movements we are required to use to interact and connect to others and everything we do in this world. Gross motor skills allows us to be able to sit and not fall over, to be able to problem solve and move our body out of the way of something before getting hurt, to be able to keep our muscles turned on for a period of time to get through a day at school or a swimming lesson or to learn how to drive a car. To be able to continue to develop these skills, over our childhood, we are also required to learn other gross motor skills such as motor planning and coordination, activate muscle tone, and have a strong core and posture skills.

Where can we build our gross motor skills in our local communities?

There are many different ways that you can build gross motor skills for yourself and your child/ren in your local communities. Moving your body and developing gross motor skills doesn’t just benefit children, but it also benefits us as adults. 

Below are a list of different strategies and ideas for you to try in your community today:

  • Playing games with friends/peers at school: Recess, lunch, afternoons and weekends are a great way to connect with your friends, family and siblings and play games. There are a range of sports/activities our children love to play; such as handball (watch out for all those sneaky new rules), playing soccer or kicking a ball, playing basketball hoops or even ‘Red Rover Cross Over’ or ‘What’s The Time, Mr Wolf?’.
  • Going to a park: Not only do some of our children love getting outside, they also love being challenged by different equipment. Check out new or different parks near you, there are some great ones that challenge climbing up in heights with bog slides, bike tracks and shopping for pretend play, flying foxes, the list goes on. The best part about parks is there are always opportunities to connect with other parents and children who are playing there too. We definitely have some great local ones in the Hunter Valley. 
  • Team sports: Sports require significant gross motor skills including the activation of large muscle groups including your core, legs and shoulders and arms. It is a great opportunity to find children of the same age and interest to try, experiment or love playing a sport together. There are so many local sports both summer and winter sports, including touch football, hockey, netball, football, soccer, basketball; the list goes on. It not only continues to build and challenge our children with body coordination skills but also social and emotional skills, such as win/lose. I have recently started playing netball again to continue to build upon my own community connections and motor skills. .
  • Individual sports: Tennis, swimming, little athletics, dancing, gymnastics, karate, all individual sports but also done with people. Sometimes we love to challenge ourselves to be better, to learn a new skill and beat personal bests. These sports are just as important and fabulous as team sports in building so much personal resilience, motivation and determination. 
  • Community events; such as Park Run: or in my case, park walk. This is a sport that is gaining lots of attention for finding a community, where people with similar interests engage in running/walking – no matter what level they are at – to build a community. It is amazing just how many children get out and give it a go, or it has become a whole family outing each week. 
  • Exploring your community: Getting to know what is around you can be so much fun. You can go on bush walks, go for walks in a new direction or find a new place or field to go to and see what it is like. Grab a Frisbee or a tennis ball to take with you, you never know what you will find!
  • Creating a treasure hunt: Depending on the age of your children, you can either create a treasure hunt (there are some great resources like AI that can help with riddles to unlock clues) to see what you can find in local parks or ovals, or the children can create them for each other and yourself. Who can find all the treasure the quickest?!?
  • Use an APP! There are so many fun ways to connect with your community, even technology has joined in to help with, Geocaching is one example.
  • Create your own game: Maybe you want to leave a random person a surprise and create your own fun! Rock painting or leaving hand made treasures out for others to find. Going back a couple of days or weeks later, to see if they are still there or not? 

Explore & Soar continues to find new and fun ways to help share our knowledge, support our families, develop confidence in gross motor skills and connect with others in their community. If you are finding that even with all these ideas that you still have concerns, then please contact us. We are more than happy to help!

Call us on 0477 708 217 or email admin@exploreandsoar.com.au

Until next time, 
Sophie

PUBLISHED JUNE 2025

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The Power of Play: Supporting Transitions in Your Child’s Development

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THE POWER OF PLAY: SUPPORTING TRANSITIONS IN YOUR CHILD’S DEVELOPMENT 

Did you know that play isn’t just for fun? It’s a powerful tool for your child’s development!? At Explore and Soar, we incorporate play into all our therapy interventions to teach essential skills, including managing transitions. 

Throughout the day, children experience numerous transitions—from waking up and eating breakfast to leaving the comfort of home and adapting to the school environment, to name a few. For many children, moving from one activity or situation to another can be particularly challenging. It can be one of the hardest times of their day, but through thoughtful play, we can help children become more comfortable with these moments and build the confidence they need to handle transitions more easily.

The Importance of Smooth Transitions in Effective Communication

Through play, we are constantly communicating, whether verbal or non-verbal, through words, gestures, or facial expressions. These moments require ‘opening’ the ‘communication circle.’ Children share their ideas, thoughts, wants, feelings, and needs while maintaining a back-and-forth exchange in conversation. Lastly, they need to “close” a communication circle, and when one is finished, they need to transition to the next. This can be challenging, as children may need time to think, can be easily distracted by noise or visual activities, or have different interest points that make this transition time extra tricky.

Therapeutic Strategies

Our Occupational Therapists use play therapy alongside the child’s Speech Pathologists, who help children with communication-based transitions, such as speech and language skills. 

You will see our therapists using a range of strategies to help in directing the communication and play ideas to make this easier for them:

  • Facial Expressions: Use big smiles and animated looks to help children understand emotions and stay connected.
  • Tone and Sounds: Varying our tone—We love to use sound to support transitions throughout our play and hold our clients in the moment with us. We whisper, talk louder in critical moments, or use sounds like “uh-oh” to create excitement or focus.
  • Body Language: Our bodies communicate too! Shrugging, clapping, and arms crossed or waving to show different emotions such as sadness, frustration, or excitement to help children navigate their feelings during play.

Utilising these strategies not only improves communication with our clients but also provides support during challenging times. This approach allows clients the space to work through difficulties together and transition between uncomfortable feelings and enjoyment while playing. This approach is powerful in supporting the development of Emotional Regulation Skills and Social Skills.

The Magic of Pretend Play

Play is a vital part of development. By as early as 13 months, children begin to use functional play themes. Play is an exciting time when a child is learning all about their everyday life activities like sleeping, eating, and bathing. This early play is a sign of your child’s growing memory, as they can remember something they saw or what you did and reenact this. 

As children mature and develop their play skills, they shift from functional to pretend play. This occurs over a period of time, with different skills building upon one another to achieve these skills. This shift to pretend play is paramount as it symbolises that there has been a cognitive shift in their development. They are no longer imitating others but now engaging in activities with intent and a purpose. When children begin developing these skills, they seek solo play or with other children their age, exploring new ways of thinking and creating. (Keep an eye out for an upcoming blog breaking down all information on play). 

However, not all children can easily shift, adapt, and be creative in their play themes with others, often finding it more accessible to play by themselves with their own ideas and internal monologue. This can be challenging in social settings like preschool and peer conversations. This is where Occupational Therapy shines! By using the child’s interests and strengths in play, therapists support children in exploring play themes while building their confidence and skills necessary for play with others. Transitioning from single-play to multiple-person play requires different communication strategies and the ability to connect with the child to support their confidence and skills to play.

Strategies to Develop Play

To enhance play skills, consider these strategies:

  • Interests in Play: Initiate play with themes and interests to engage the child.
  • Creating Challenges: Introduce problems for them to solve together while encouraging collaboration.
  • Predictability: Allows the child to be engaged and develop their play skills while establishing a consistent routine that helps children feel secure.
  • Familiar Environments: Starting play in a safe, familiar space, such as the home loungeroom, helps ease the transition.
  • Humour and Fun: Use playful scenarios to make transitions enjoyable, such as using the child’s toy and self in fun ways, such as getting stuck, falling over, or supporting the child in their play themes and them in transitions. 

Working on these skills as an Occupational Therapist helps support children in having the confidence and skill set to transition into new environments, such as preschool and school when playing with other children with more ease and confidence.

Building Skills Through Pretend Play

If there are set skill sets that your children require additional support for, providing opportunities through pretend play, such as using dolls, teddies or trucks, is a great way to support the comprehension of different transitions, help them encounter potential problems through play, as well as resolving those problems. Pretend play is a gateway to helping our children process what is happening around them, learn from them, and understand what that means to them. Have you ever been playing, and your child has said or done something that has reflected your real life? It’s a natural way for them to make sense of the world!

The Importance of Repetition

As with developing any new skill, learning transitions can be challenging and requires repetition, emotional support, structure and predictability. Providing consistent support and opportunities for your children to practice playing with others is paramount in strengthening these skill sets. 

Another way to support your children with transitions in play is using storytime. Using different visuals and books helps children understand play themes more and a different modality of learning. Repetition through play will help consolidate their knowledge, make them feel confident when something unexpected happens, and help them transition through those changes. 

Remember, all of us are constantly transitioning through changes in our daily lives. Some days, we do it well. Some days, we don’t! This is perfectly normal, and the same is true for our children. If you feel like you need some more tools and strategies in your tool kit, call us so we can help. We’re here to help you navigate this journey together!

Happy Playing!

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If you’d like to chat more, please don’t hesitate to contact us today! Call us on 0477 708 217 or email admin@exploreandsoar.com.au

Until Next Time,
Jess

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2024

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What’s really happening when your kids play pretend?

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WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING WHEN YOUR KIDS PLAY PRETEND

When I hear the words ‘pretend play’, my mind instantly goes to playing ’parents’ with my sisters, using our teddies as babies and making our little brother play the mean mum. I remember playing shops with a shoe box as the cash register, using the coins next to dad’s bed and stealing mum’s lipstick to look older as the shop attendant. My brother was obsessed with dinosaurs when he was younger, and to include him in our play, his dinosaurs often took on a lot less scarier roles, my personal favourite being our vehicles for transportation. 

What I didn’t know then was that my play themes relied heavily on my own experiences within the world through books, movies, and stories as well as what my parents had shown me through their introduction of play as well as their own everyday life activities such as eating, sleeping, and bathing. 

Pretend play shaped my childhood, it provided me with opportunities for creativity, imagination, emotional development, role playing, social development, increased confidence and so much more!

The Explore and Soar team recently took a course about play therapy and we had a collection realisation of the impact that pretend play can have on early development, also how pretend play can tell us more about a child’s development. 

What is pretend play?

The ability to pretend in play is about understanding the meaning of what is happening beyond the literal function of toys.

In other terms, it is ‘thinking play’.

When children are playing pretend, they are playing as if something or someone is real. They are creating a situation where there is more going on that what is literally happening. 

While there are many different types of play, pretend play is unique due to the specific key development skills it focuses on. These include:  

  1. Ability to spontaneously self-initiate play
  2. Sequencing play actions logically
  3. Using objects as something else (object substitution or symbols in play),
  4. Engaging with a doll or teddy character outside of themselves
  5. Integrating their play so a clear play script is evident
  6. Role play and socially interacting using play.

Even having a cup of tea with a child is pretend play, when you are pretending to drink from an empty cup or blowing on the empty cup because the tea is hot.

Why is pretend play important?

Pretend play is closely linked with language development, narrative language, abstract thought, social interaction, self-regulation, emotional integration of child’s experiences and creativity. 

Play sets the foundation for the development of critical social and emotional knowledge and skills. Through play, children learn how to forge connections with others, share, negotiate and resolve conflicts. Play also teaches children leadership, group interaction, and self-advocacy skills. 

Play is a natural tool that children use to build their resilience and coping skills as they learn to navigate relationships and deal with social challenges. It is also a way that kids conquer their fears, for example through re-enacting fantasy heroes.

Pretend play satisfies a basic human need to express imagination, curiosity and creativity, which are key resources in a knowledge-driven world. They help us to cope, to find pleasure, and to use our imaginative and innovative powers.

Pretend play can also be mixed in with other types of play. For example, when children are running around in gross motor play , they might also be pretending they are running in the Olympics or being chased by a crocodile. Or in fine motor play, they may be threading a necklace but the ultimate goal of making the necklace is for the princess in the play scenario to wear it.

How will the team use pretend play to hit goals?

Pretend play is a tool that we occupational therapists look forward to adding into sessions and sharing with parents and caregivers to explore avenues for creativity and spontaneity. 

As a team at Explore and Soar, our focus for this year is Safety for Vulnerability. Pretend play is a way that children unconsciously choose to present their emotions. It is here that we can model true self-expression and vulnerability, where there is no judgement on their chosen actions or themes as they are showing us their honest imaginations. Supporting this creativity is crucial to building a trusting and joyous relationship.

General ideas for pretend play.

  • Creating your own cubby house,
  • placing a variety of objects into a tub such as kitchen utensils, flowers, sticks and inviting your child to explore them,
  • Narrating and asking questions how they feel, the colour, shape and size. For older children this could look like discussing what each object could represent in a play scene,
  • Pretend objects can be different things.
    • For example, boxes can be cards, beds, tables, oven, house and so on. Cloth can be grass, ocean, deserts and snow,
  • Create spaces where you can join your child in role play.
    • For example, different rooms in the house could represent different everyday settings such as a shop or petrol stations, where the children have to use objects in their rooms to represent that,
  • Play Dress ups,
  • Play mums and dad’s,
  • Have a tea party,
  • Play Cars, trucks, Dinosaurs adventures,
  • On a smaller scale, try creating meaningful movements with figurines or small toys where the child can manipulate the toys and have their characters interact with each other.

Ask our Explore and Soar team for more specific activities or ideas on age-appropriate play themes and ideas to help start playing with your children today!

Until next time, 
Molly

CALL US TODAY

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 5, 2023

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Roughhousing

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ROUGHHOUSING

Hello Spring! It’s officially the season of change and us finally getting to enjoy being outside again. I thoughtshare my favourite play activity with you; roughhousing. 

I don’t know about you but I find winter really hard. The cold inconsistent weather, leaves you no choice but to be inside more often than not. This becomes quite stifling and finding ways to play only inside can be challenging for parents. But Spring is here and it’s time to get outside once again.

Spring; the time I most enjoy going to the park, beach or coffee dates with friends and letting that fresh air move through my home again. What I also love about this time of year is we all start getting active again. Either exploring in nature with bush walks, playing outside and/or roughhousing with our siblings. 

Growing up, our family was known for being active. We loved moving our bodies and were always outside entertaining ourselves. Our parents were always thinking about how to keep us busy, entertained and having fun. Now this was not an easy feat as all 3 of us have very different inside game preferences but lucky for us when we were all outside, we all loved to move! 

Now don’t get me wrong some days this worked beautifully and we played nicely. On other days, well we fought like cats and dogs to put it nicely.  And some days we still do! Boy did we roughhouse. But, it was exactly what our bodies needed. We were also lucky, that growing up dad was a big kid himself and loved to wrestle and rough us up!

When we would go and visit our cousins (being 5 to 9 years older and all boys), again we would wrestle and play with them. Now did they happen to just hang us upside down in the air, hold us down so we had to figure out how to get out? Of course they did! Did we find ways to get out? Not always truth be told. But did we have fun? Absolutely! And still to this day, they are honestly some of my favourite and memorable times. 

Looking back and with the knowledge of play and OT that I have today, roughhousing is such an integral part of our development and growing up. It works on so many different skills but it is also so much fun! I do find that today most parents tend to bubble wrap their children with concerns of being injured or dealing with the emotions and safety. But managed well it is safe form of play and the benefits are fantastic.

It can be used to support your children in;

  • Activating the body and the sensory systems, processing and responding to the input
  • Increasing child to parent connections
  • Helping to build trust and safety
  • Getting their body moving for core, postural and gross motor development
  • Helping to enhance non-verbal social skills, tuning in and engaging to the other people’s emotions and body language and then to respond accordingly
  • Expanding skills on co-regulating emotions and self-regulating emotions within the games; having self-control. Learning how to independently increase and decrease  interest levels and controlling emotions. These skills can then be transferred into your child’s everyday social interactions with siblings, parents, friends and into the community.
  • When playing these games, you may have a chaser and a catcher, negotiations, sharing of ideas, winning/losing. These decisions only expand their social skills, and develop a greater understanding of cooperation, respect, and empathy.
  • Activates the higher executive functioning skills all kids need for academic development, such as ideation, problem solving and creativity.
  • AND my personal favourite…. It is a form of play that allows kids to make mistakes without fear or punishment.

And remember, when there is fun and laughter, your child is actively learning new skills at a faster rate!

If you want to learn more about roughhousing, you should read ‘The Art of Roughhousing’ by Anthony T. DeBenedet. It is one of my all time favourite books and it has many different games and ideas on how to play with our children and develop the skills I mentioned above through roughhousing. So go check it out if you are interested!

Also, for a fun quick way and guide to get started in roughhousing and supporting your children in engaging in this play, click on this link and get your free hand out today. It is all my rules and favourite games I play with the kids to help them develop their motor skills and their emotional, social development. 

Have a go, see what works for you and your family. Stay safe, create structures and boundaries to support everyone when playing and simply just go for it. It’s Spring, so play outside in the backyard and wrestle on the trampoline, in the park or anywhere! But most importantly have fun whilst doing so. I hope you can have fun connecting, laughing and building great memories for you and your family. 

If you would like more ideas, supports or strategies, feel free to contact us and we would love to chat to you about it today.

Jess.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

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