Sensorimotor Activities
A child’s foundation to growth, development, and learning starts with sensory and motor interaction with the world. Crawling, balancing, visual tracking, and coordination are all ways that a baby experiences the world while simultaneously developing their brain and body.
Often, children who struggle with learning or developmental disorders have sensorimotor system delays.1 It is crucial to improve motor function, sensory detection, and processing before any higher learning, behavioral or academic changes can truly happen. This is at the core of everything we do at Brain Balance.
What are sensorimotor activities?
Sensorimotor activities are tasks and exercises that engage and strengthen the brain by activating our body and our senses at the same time. Sensorimotor activities are a powerful way to strengthen the brain and improve cognitive processing – our brain’s ability to gather information and respond appropriately in our daily lives.
How do sensorimotor activities work?
The sensory and motor systems are tightly integrated. Sensory stimulation and feedback provides important information to the brain through sensory skills like smell, touch, vision, hearing, and balance. Motor function is how your brain and body receives, and then reacts to, sensory stimulation.
When done regularly, sensorimotor activities can help build:
- Muscle tone, strength, and coordination
- Rhythm and timing
- Bilateral coordination
- Gross and fine-motor skills
- Primitive and postural reflexes
- Eye-muscle balance and coordination
- Vestibular balance and posture
What are some sensorimotor activities to try at home?
At Brain Balance, we’re all about helping families find fun and inventive ways to stay active and keep the brain engaged from the comfort of your home. Below, you can find fun activities to help activate the sensory and motor systems in the brain that the whole family can enjoy. It only takes three to five minutes to engage your muscles, spike your heart rate and positively impact your focus and memory.
Brain Power Exercise Circuit:
3-Minute Circuit (Ages 4-10)
- Choose 3 activities below. Complete each for 1 minute. Repeat 2x per day.
5-Minute Circuit (Ages 11+)
- Choose 3 activities below. Complete each for 1 minute. Repeat 2x per day.
- Bike ride
- Dance to a song
- Jumping jacks
- Jump rope
- Tag Relay race
- Stretching & yoga
- Planks Sit ups
- Running in place
- Simon says
- Frog walk
- Obstacle course
- Fast paced walk around the block
- Army crawl
How can you improve sensorimotor skills?
The Brain Balance Program’s unique combination of activities is designed to drive meaningful change in the symptoms they are experiencing. After families complete the cognitive assessment, we personalize a program that is tailored to your child.
Our program then works to integrate sensory input and strengthen sensorimotor skills through the frequency and duration of activities prescribed in your personalized program.
Find a better way forward.
