What is proprioception?

Sensory integration

﻿Today's lesson will be about the proprioceptive sense, our power sense. We are going to learn what it is and how it can help us. 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 learn about the proprioception sense. That is, our power sense. As I've said already, we're going to see what it is and how it helps us today. For today's lesson, you will need a closed bag of rice or beans, and you're also going to need a piece of A4 paper or some tissues. So get all of these things ready and when you're ready, we can resume the video. So what is proprioception? It's a very, very long word. Can you say it? Proprioception. Sounds a bit like a dinosaur if you ask me. Anyway, can you show me if you can point to your elbow? Now I'll give you a hint, your elbow is somewhere on your arm. That's right, that's your elbow joint. Let's see if you can do something else. Can you show me your strong arm muscles? So the clue is in the title, it's your arm. And I want to see some really strong muscles, show me your strong arm muscles. Brilliant! Now that is part of our power sense. Our proprioceptive sense are little nerve messengers in all of our joints, so here's a joint and there's a joint. So everywhere where there's a bendy bit in your body, that's where these are joints, and in all of your muscles, all of these strong arm muscles that we have, these little messengers, and they tell our body about how heavy something is or where your body is in space. Let's play a game to find out a little bit more about this. I want you to pause this video so that you can complete the task. So what we're going to do is you are going to guess the weight. Now, remember, I asked whether you can get some tissues ready and also a bag of rice. That's what we're going to need for this task. So, ask your parent or carer to help you with this. You are going to close your eyes and you're going to hold out both your hands and you're going to ask your parent or carer to place one of the items in one hand and one of the items in the other hand. So I've got a bag of rice and I've got some tissues in here. But you're going to do this with your eyes closed. And I want you to kind of figure out which one is heavier. Now you can try this with lots of other things in the house as well. So see if you can find a few things and have a little bit of an experiment to see if your arms and your hands can figure out which is the heavier. Once you've finished, come back and we'll carry on with the lesson. Let's play another game to find out more. That was really much fun, wasn't it? Could you figure out that the bag of rice was a lot heavier than an A4 piece of paper? I did, and it really made me think! The next game is we're going to look a little bit more at this power sense of ours. We get to see "Where is my body in space?" game. So the first game that we're going to play is the finger-to-nose game. Then we're going to play balance on one leg with your eyes open and balance on one leg with your eyes closed. So the finger-to-nose game is where you're going to ask your parent or carer to help you. They're going to put their pointy finger, so they've got their pointy finger. They're going to put that right in front of you, and you're going to see if you, with your finger, can touch your nose and touch your finger, touch their finger, touch your nose, touch their finger, just like that. But here's the trick, you're going to do it with your eyes closed. So with your eyes closed, you touch your nose and then you find their finger, touch your nose, touch their finger. You can do that. That is your muscle sense, your power sense, working really, really well. And the next thing that you're going to do is you're going to stand on one leg. First, you're going to do it with your eyes open, and then you're going to do it with your eyes closed. Now here's a hint. You may find that that may be a little bit more tricky to do it when your eyes are closed. So have fun playing these games and come back to the lesson and press Play when you've finished. Now, that was amazing. I saw some amazing balancing skills there, well done. How does my power sense help me? What's the fuss? Let's have a look. Our power sense help us in lots of different ways. And we're going to explore that over the weeks ahead. Our muscle sense, or the power sense or the proprioception sense, all of these different names it has. help us to climb, it helps us to carry things, it helps us to push and pull open doors, it helps us to run, it helps us not to bump into people, it helps us to be calm. And it also helps us to play lots of games with our friends. So, our proprioceptive sense, what are we going to do? Your challenge for today, is with your parent or carers, see how many things you can find today that you can pull, that you can push, or that you can carry. Have fun, and we look forward to seeing you back soon. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and hashtag #LearnWithOak.

What is proprioception?

What is proprioception?

These resources were made for remote use during the pandemic, not classroom teaching.

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