Strengthening our Proprioception Sense

Sensory integration

﻿In this lesson, we're going to continue to look at our proprioceptive sense or our power sense and we're particularly going to have a look at how our mouth and chewing contributes to the power sense. 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. Today we're going to carry on learning about our power sense and we're going to look at mouth games that will strengthen this sense of body awareness or proprioception that we have. So let's have a look at what you will need. You are going to need a bubble mixture and a bubble wand. You may want to get a straw and some paper and also a plastic container. You may also want to have something edible to chew. But make sure that it's quite nice and chewy, so ask your parent and carer to help you. So pause the video here to get all of your resources together and then once you've got everything together and you are ready, press play and we will start the lesson. Okay, now remember, our power sense is a body sense and our jaw muscle is part of this. So anything to do with chewing, blowing, biting, sucking are all very powerful ways for us to regulate. Now remember, regulation is about whether we are oversensitive or under responsive to certain sensory input and we've looked at different senses where we've explored this already. So let's play a game to find out a little bit more. We are going to play a paper fishing game. So ask your parent or carer to help you cut up five pieces of paper into small blocks, about 3 centimetres will be fine. Now you are going to use your straw and see how quickly you can pick up each piece of paper by sucking onto the straw and lift the paper up and see if you can move it with, while you hold your breath and then you let go, so you gently breathe out and then the paper should fall into the container. So see how quickly you can do that and then press play once you've done that. Great, well done! Let's play another game. This time we're going to play a game with bubbles. You are going to ask your parent or carer to show you how to blow bubbles and I've got a bubble wand here. So I'm going to take it out and now what we need to do is you need to kind of really think about your breath. So first of all you need to take a deep breath in, and then practise making a "o" shape with your mouth and you gently going to breathe out, so you going to So practise that. Pause the video here to complete the task and then once you've practised it a couple of times, you're going to take your bubbles and you're going to do the same. So you start off with taking a deep breath. Making a "o" shape with your mouth and blow out. That didn't work really well, let's try it again. Now that is just silly. There we go Third time lucky, now it's going to be your go. Pause the video, have a go and press play when you are ready to carry on with this lesson. Well let's have a think about chewing and how chewing can help us. So we've already explored how we can use sucking, we've used some blowing with the bubbles and now we're going to have a look at chewing. So pause the video here to complete this task. So remember I reminded you early on to ask your parent or carer to find something that you can chew on that is safe and edible. So notice how hard your jaw has to work when you have to chew on something, especially if it's like a toffee or even marshmallows can be quite sticky. And now think about whether you find this calming or was it actually waking you up a little bit? Have a chat to your parent or carer about what happens when you chew something that is really chewy. Press play once you've finished. Well done, that was awesome! You are a great explorer today and I hope you've enjoyed finding out a little bit more about proprioception and how blowing, sucking and chewing can help us to be more alert or more calm.

Strengthening our Proprioception Sense

Strengthening our Proprioception Sense

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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