Playing with bubbles is an extremely fun activity for kids of all ages, and it is a very safe activity for toddlers as well. As fun as it can get, there are also many therapeutic benefits of playing with such bubbles. There are about six different ways you can target a variety of essential skills for therapeutic purposes while letting your child play with giant bubbles. Without further ado, here are six common benefits of playing with giant bubbles and how they help improve your child’s self-help skills.
Persistence and frustration control
When the bubbles pop, strings get tangled or the wind changes direction, all of these factors provide great opportunities for the child to practice their control over frustration and their ability to persist. It is because there is a great potential reward awaiting them, which is the opportunity to create giant bubbles again and again if they keep trying.
Motor planning
Allowing your kid to assemble the bubble wand provides great opportunities for them to improve their motor planning (a form of motor-based problem solving skill), but also for other skills such as visual-motor integration and bilateral coordination.
Functional balance
Your kid will be able to effectively utilize his or her postural and leg muscles, as well as their vestibular system to maintain balance while they stand back up, bend down and operate the bubble wand to create as many bubbles as they want.
Visual-motor integration
Playing with bubbles also trains better hand-eye coordination, which the child needs to adjust his or her hands at the given moment, and to what their eyes are seeing when they aim for the bubble bottle of solution.
Bilateral coordination
In order to use the bubble wand well, the kid has to be able to coordinate both hands well. Kids with poorer bilateral coordination can benefit from this fun activity as they can avoid using one hand alone than both hands at the same time. They will also eventually overcome clumsiness and awkwardness when performing certain tasks in daily living.
Visual tracking
Playing with giant bubbles will also improve one of your child’s sensory skills and that is visual tracking. In this case, it will train them to track certain sights without turning their whole heads. It means that they will be able to use their eyes only to track something visual in motion and it is something that they are interested in.
How can the activity further target a therapeutic or developmental skill?
By now, you might already be curious on how this seemingly insignificant activity can target something which concerns your child’s development. Let’s take improving sensory integration and postural stability into the picture. You will have to include an extra task like asking your child to sit on a ball while operating his or her bubble wand. This extra challenge will stabilize their posture and improve their sense of balance. This combination is especially beneficial for kids who are affected from weak postural muscles.
Your child can improve their fine motor skills with pediatric occupational therapy in CT at Cheshire Fitness Zone. To see our OT programs in action, check out the video below.
