Tummy Strength

Occupational therapy

﻿Hi, I'm really looking forward to our lesson today. I hope you are too. Before we get started, this is just a little reminder. We're here to support any approaches you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know that this lesson is going to be going out to so many different children and families. So if you're not sure about anything or have any questions, then please do contact your usual therapy team. Hi, in today's lesson, we're going to learn all about why it's so important to do activities on our tummies and how it can really help improve our core strength. Why is it so important that we work on our tummies? Well, because it's a different way of working, what's happening is that we're using different muscles. So when we're lying down, we have to lift our shoulders, our chest and our head off the floor and that means that we're making those muscles stronger. We're also having to keep our head in a very different position and this helps us to improve our body skills. And there's so many games and activities that we can do while we're in this position. I want you to pause the video now so that you can get the following items for our activity. Some space to lie down on the front, a comfortable surface like a carpet or a rug or even a blanket and a game to do on the floor, such as a puzzle. Restart once you're ready. For our first activity, we're going to be pushing ourselves up, so I want you to put your hands flat on the floor, to the side of your chest, then you're going to push yourself up while keeping your hips and your legs flat on the floor. Try not to rest on your elbows and keep your forearms flat on the floor, okay? So the first thing you're going to do, if you really struggled with Superman, is you're just going to try and push yourself up, couple of seconds and relax, okay. Up and relax. Pause the video now and try pushing yourself up. Restart once you're finished. For our next activity, we're going to play a game while lying on our front. Try and hold this position while you playing the game and don't roll sideways to have a cheeky little rest. Something that will help strengthen that, is if you do a puzzle, or I quite like to do some drawing. And you can do your patterns or little shapes and it's a nice activity to do while you're lying down. Okay, so once you feel quite confident and comfortable doing an activity like that, so you can see I can do that, but my forearms, my shoulder, my elbow are nicely in line and you can then do any activity that you really enjoy doing. Pause the video now to have a go. Restart once you're finished. Now what I want you to go and get, is some space to lie down on your front, some soft balls or toys or maybe even balloons and then some buckets or some spots to throw to and if it's possible a wall that you can face. Restart once you're ready. Our next activity is a bit like handball. So I want you to lie flat on your front, about two metres away from the wall if you have enough space. Place your hands by your ears, off the floor and let's watch the video to see what activities we have going on. Is to get a ball, Buster, is to get a ball. And you are going to roll it towards the wall and hope that it comes back to you, okay? So what you want to do is, in that position, for just a couple of seconds each, you want to, there's a ball for you, Buster, there's a ball for you, go get it. For a couple of seconds each, you want to just lift up and push the ball away and catch it when it comes back. Okay, or, so that's something you can do or you can play target handball with your dog and hope that he brings it back. Good boy, bring, good boy. And sometimes he'll bring it and sometimes he won't. You can also do this with a friend, so you could for a few seconds come up and throw the ball. Okay, pause the video and try the game. Restart once you're finished. Our next activity is very similar to what we've just done, but now we're going to try targeting the ball. Okay, if you have little targets, a little spot in front of you, you can play a targeting game, so get some balls and you can see we've got a lovely target, a yellow target, a white target. And you can just prop up and then try and get the balls in, if you need to rest afterwards, absolutely fine. But you're going to push up and you're going to try and get it in the yellow, pop, next time. Okay, now this is what I want you to do is just lie down, come up, take the ball and throw, okay and hopefully you'll have a cooperative pet who can bring the ball back to you. Buster, bring, bring. Okay, so you can do that. The other thing you can do is to go into the full Superman and then you can take items and throw them. Okay, and relax. Okay, pause the video and try that game. Restart once you're finished. Some things you can try in this position is reading a book or you can see if someone can time you and try and increase the time each time. Remember if you're feeling really uncomfortable or a little bit queasy when you lift yourself off the floor, please do tell a responsible adult. Do the best for you. Don't worry about your friends can do. Practise, practise, practise. Make the games that you choose fun so that you can work longer and get stronger. Thank you for listening. And remember, if you'd like to please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. See you next time.

Tummy Strength

Tummy Strength

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