Rachel Harrington, COTA/L, AC & Jessica Hill, COTA/L
Get ready for an episode full of simple, straightforward activities using one piece of equipment - a yoga/therapy ball!
We dive into the benefits of this single piece of equipment, why you should have one in your home and multiple in your clinic and school, and then we jump right into our 10 favorite activities using a yoga ball!
Some of these activities can be done independently while others will need some assistance. These activities can be done with a variety of ages and modified to fit a variety of needs.
Get ready for some new activity ideas that you can try TODAY!
Check out our Gross Motor Skills Activity Skills Course - an entire video library of therapeutic activities using simple pieces of equipment (yoga/therapy ball, Bosu, hula hoop, and scooter board) that you can use immediately!
Get ready for an episode full of simple, straightforward activities using one piece of equipment - a yoga/therapy ball!
We dive into the benefits of this single piece of equipment, why you should have one in your home and multiple in your clinic and school, and then we jump right into our 10 favorite activities using a yoga ball!
Some of these activities can be done independently while others will need some assistance. These activities can be done with a variety of ages and modified to fit a variety of needs.
Get ready for some new activity ideas that you can try TODAY!
Check out our Gross Motor Skills Activity Skills Course - an entire video library of therapeutic activities using simple pieces of equipment (yoga/therapy ball, Bosu, hula hoop, and scooter board) that you can use immediately!
Sitting on the ball, you're going to have small items on the floor like pom poms, crumpled pieces of paper, anything small and relatively lightweight. And you're going to have the child use their toes to pick up the small objects. Maybe they transfer it to their hand. Maybe they transfer it to a bucket. Be sure to switch feet and make sure they are doing this activity with both feet. But this is really great similar to the previous one where we are working on postural control and balance while lifting one foot up off the ground. We're also working on the bubinski reflex and some tactile processing with this one.
Rachel:
I'm Rachel.
Jessica:
And I'm Jessica. And this is All Things Sensory by Harkla.
Rachel:
We are both certified occupational therapy assistants and together with Harkla. We are on a mission to empower parents, therapists and educators to help raise confident and strong children of all abilities.
Jessica:
On this podcast, we chat about all things sensory diving into special needs occupational therapy, parenting, self care, overall health and wellness and so much more.
Rachel:
We're here to provide raw, honest and fun strategies, ideas and information for parents, therapists and educators as well as other professionals to implement into daily life.
Jessica:
Thank you so much for joining us.
Rachel:
Hey there! Welcome to All Things Sensory by Harkla. We are so happy to have you here today. I'm Rachel.
Jessica:
And I'm Jessica.
Rachel:
And today we are talking about 10 therapy ball activities and if you remember a while ago, we're gonna give you a little background, we did a podcast episode on 10 activities with a platform swing. And Jessica gave me a really hard time about it when I was like, Hey, let's do this episode. I'm throwing you out there.
Jessica:
Your throwing me under the bus.
Rachel:
I'm not throwing you under the bus. I'm throwing you out there. But let me finish the story. It's gonna come full circle, somehow. So we did the episode, and we got some good feedback. And Jessica had a really good response. And she was like, You know what? That actually worked really well. I didn't mind that episode and people.
Jessica:
Good response.
Rachel:
Well, you weren't like sassy about it. Like I would have been. Like, oh, yeah, well, it's fair. Jessica is right again,
Jessica:
I am more regulated than you are.
Rachel:
Shall we just talked about our desk setup too while we're talking about it.
Jessica:
It is kind of a mess on your side. How many drinks do you have?
Rachel:
I have three.
Jessica:
How many snacks do you have?
Rachel:
I have two and I have one fidget.
Jessica:
Only one fidget?
Rachel:
And, one pack of gum.
Jessica:
What do I have? On my side? I have a cup of tea and my phone and that's it.
Rachel:
That's fine. We all have sensory quirks.
Jessica:
And we all have days where we need more strategies.
Rachel:
And we did forget to mention that I am sitting on a therapy ball as well. So yes, today is one of those days where I just need a little bit more support and I am able to advocate for my needs. What are we talking about again today?
Jessica:
All right, we're gonna talk about activities with a therapy ball. Now when we say therapy ball, we mean like a yoga ball, the big round exercise ball. You can also do a lot of these with a peanut ball, which provides more stability. So if you're working with a child who cannot balance while sitting on the round therapy ball, switch them over to the peanut ball. So they still get the same benefits and have more support.
Rachel:
Yes. So our goal here, this is a podcast, so we want you to visualize what we're talking about. We want you to reach out and ask questions. If you have questions, you can always DM us on Instagram at all things sensory podcast. We love to chat with you there. So let's jump in. These activities are great if you don't have like a swing or if you want to get some movement. Maybe it's snowing outside are rainy and you can't get outside. These activities stimulate so many different senses and they just provide a lot of really beneficial input.
Jessica:
So number one is to sit on the therapy ball and play catch. You can have your child do this by themselves where they're holding the ball, like the smaller ball, and they're rotating their trunk to the left, bouncing and catching the ball on the floor. Then they rotate to the right bounce and catch the ball on the floor. Or if they're in front of a wall, they can toss the ball to the wall and catch all while maintaining that upright seated position on the therapy ball to address that postural control and core strength.
Rachel:
Number two, we are going to do a partner activity. So, if you have to therapy balls, great. If not, then put the child on the therapy ball. Ideally, their feet should be on the floor. We want them to be, ideally, in that 90-90-90 position. If not that's okay. Just adjust and modify as needed, but they need to be able to to stabilize themselves. So with the partner going back to back, we're going to grab a ball, a beanbag, a stuffed animal, anything motivating to the child and we're going to twist backwards, pass the item, twist to the other side, pass the item. And the trick here with this one is we want our eyes to follow the target or the item, right? So we don't want to keep our head facing forward the entire time. We want our head to rotate left and right and watch the ball as we're passing back and forth. We're getting a lot of that rotary vestibular input, which is very alerting. Very helpful for eyes skills and make sure that if a child or if you doing this as well, if you're having any dizziness or nausea or any adverse reactions, make sure that you follow it with proprioceptive input, heavy work, push your tongue to the roof of your mouth and push your hands down on your head.
Jessica:
The next one is having the child sit on the therapy ball and you are going to be there to support them, either by supporting their legs, holding them at their knees or their you know lower thighs, or if they're very unstable, you can support them at their hips. And they are going to move into supine, so laying backwards over the ball into an inverted upside down position. They're going to grab an item from the floor, maybe it's a beanbag or a stuffed animal, and then they're going to sit up, activating their core muscles, flexing their neck to tuck their chin while they sit up. Again, you providing as much assistance here as needed, so they can be successful with this. And then they throw the item to a target. The target could be a basket, the target could be something on the wall like a letter or a picture, or it could even be a cup tower that the child has already stacked and then they knock it down.
Rachel:
This is like the OG activity that we always like to share. Like this is such a classic, so helpful. Number four, we're working on some different skills here. We're going to be sitting on the ball. We'll start with sitting on the ball, and you're going to be sitting in front of a wall and you're going to use one foot to write on the wall, spell words, draw shapes. If you want to tape like a visual up on the wall, then they could trace that with their foot. If you want to put an infinity loop on the wall, they could trace the infinity loop with their foot. Switch feet. But again, we're working really, really intensely on the postural control because it's definitely challenging to balance on one foot on the ball. So provide assistance and modification, stabilize that ball, use a peanut ball for this one, use one of those therapy balls that has like the little legs on it or put the therapy ball in like a ring, like a toy ring, to help keep it stabilized a little bit. And another way that you could do this one is by having the child lay on their tummy on the ball and keep their feet on the ground and then use your hands to draw on the wall as well. Draw, trace, whatever activity you want to do on the wall. So it's similar. We're still working on the wall and the ball. You're kind of working on that Landau reflex a little bit too with this one if you're keeping your feet on the floor, so.
Jessica:
The wall and the ball.
Rachel:
Wall on the ball the ball on the wall.
Jessica:
Trying not fall. I couldn't help it
Rachel:
I'm dead. This is so good.
Jessica:
Next.
Rachel:
We warned you about this episode.
Jessica:
Spicy. Next is one foot pickup.
Rachel:
Oh my god, I love this one.
Jessica:
Yes, it is a great one. Sitting on the ball, you're gonna have small items on the floor like pom poms, crumpled pieces of paper, anything small and light, relatively lightweight and you're going to have the child use their toes to pick up the small objects. Maybe they transfer it to their hand. Maybe they transfer it to a bucket. Be sure to switch feet and make sure they are doing this activity with both feet. But this is really great similar to the previous one where we are working on postural control and balance while lifting one foot up off the ground. We're also working on the bubinski reflex and some tactile processing with this one.
Rachel:
Love this one. You know that caterpillar game, the caterpillar wiggle game?
Jessica:
Yeah, with the little ball?
Rachel:
Yeah.
Jessica:
Yeah.
Rachel:
We were doing this yesterday with that. It was great. It was fun. Make sure you switch feet right? Did you mention that?
Jessica:
Yes. Switch feet.
Rachel:
Yep, that's helpful. Okay, number six, we're going to do the rainbow partner ball pass. So close your eyes, if you're safe to close your eyes and not driving. Keep them open, but just like really work on your visualizing skills here. So we're going to be laying on the ground, on our back. We're going to have two people. We're going to be laying with our heads next to each other like what do you say?
Jessica:
You can also do it with your feet towards each other.
Rachel:
Yeah, your head or your feet pointing towards each other.
Jessica:
Either way.
Rachel:
Whatever strikes your fancy. So you're going to grab the therapy ball or the ball that you're using, whatever ball it is. We're talking about therapy ball so ideally a therapy ball,
Jessica:
Not a racket ball.
Rachel:
I mean you could use a racket ball.
Jessica:
But it would be so hard.
Rachel:
It would be interesting. I'm thinking like a playground ball. A modification for a younger kiddo. So you're gonna grab it with your feet, or your hands, wherever you're facing and grab it with your feet, grab that ball, lift it up, and pass it to your hands, and then pass it to your partner's hands or feet. And then your partner is going to grab the ball with their feet or their hands and then complete it.
Jessica:
So essentially, you could always start with just one person, right? So you could teach the rainbow pass to the child first to have them do it. Where they are transferring the ball from their hands to their feet and it's like, you envision that they're making a rainbow with of the ball, right? So if they start with the ball in their hands, the ball is on the floor, and they reach up and grab it with their hands, they lift it up over their body, they lift their feet up in the air to grab the ball with their feet, and then as slowly as possible, this takes a lot of core strength, they use their feet to bring the ball down to the ground. And that's like one rep of the rainbow pass.
Rachel:
I think I really confused myself and people are trying to explain the partner pass before I explained the single pass.
Jessica:
Sure.
Rachel:
Because then once you complete the single, then you can start passing it to the partner where their head is like next to your head or their feet or next to your feet. And you can pass it and you know, it's really it's a really fun social activity to work together with that one and you kind of make a double rainbow.
Jessica:
Yeah, you do. Or two rainbows. Double rainbow,
Rachel:
Or if you really wanted to get crazy, and your heads are next to each other, and you grab the ball with your feet, and you don't use your hands at all. But your hands are like on the ground and you have to like lift your hips up.
Jessica:
And transfer it to your feet.
Rachel:
Yes. And then they have to grab it and put it all the
Jessica:
Yeah, in that case, you would want your heads to be like way down. right next to each other. Number seven, ball walkouts. This is a classic one as well. This is really great for strengthening and coordination,. You're going to have your child lay on their stomach on the ball, roll out onto their hands, and walk out with their hands while maintaining the ball under their legs. And then walk back to the beginning. This is very, very challenging from like lower body stabilization standpoint. So you can start with a peanut ball so they have more support. You can be right there with them to stabilize the ball so it doesn't roll out from under them or you can just let them do it. and problem solve, which is always a great option as well. You can make this one more difficult by adding a crunch at the end. So after they've walked out, and the ball is stabilized under their shins, they bend their knees to crunch into their belly and their chest and then straighten their legs back out and walk back for a little extra core work.
Rachel:
The next one I also love and all of the kids love this one too. We call this supine ball kicks.
Jessica:
Even when this one is super hard because I was doing this one in the clinic. Even when this activity is really hard, it's so fun.
Rachel:
I was doing this with my little sensory class and I had all the kids line up. And I'm like, really throwing the ball at them. Not like not them, but.
Jessica:
You're throwing it at them.
Rachel:
For them to kick it back at me and it's so fun to be able to kick a ball at an adult.
Jessica:
Sure. Yeah.
Rachel:
What it looks like is the child is going to be laying on their back or in supine, and we're going to grab a therapy ball or again, if you need to modify this for younger kiddos, grab a different ball.
Jessica:
A beach ball would work. I was gonna say with this one, I also like to have
Rachel:
The beach ball, volleyball and you're going to have them lift their legs up and kind of like bring their knees to their chest and you're going to toss the ball to them. And they're going to time when they need to kick and they're going to kick that ball back at you. So it's again really fun because they get to kick the ball at you. You get to be really dramatic and oh my gosh, you knocked me over. They're gonna kick it over their head. They're probably gonna miss depending on the age, but it's a really fun and motivating activity for kids. And plus, it works on primitive reflexes, core strength, just a whole gamut of things, timing and sequencing. All the things. the kids try crossing their arms over their chest and lifting their head up off the ground while they kick the ball. And I like this one for force modulations. So practicing kicking too hard, kicking too soft, and kicking just right. All right, number nine. This one is sitting on the ball and crashing backwards. So you're going to have the child sit on the therapy ball, bounce, and then have something soft for them to land on so they can crash backwards. I really like this one with younger kids to sing the five little monkeys jumping on the bed song. Super fun. Cause and effect, counting, sequencing, but this activity really targets the Moro reflex. So if a child is very nervous, anxious, hesitant to crash backwards, after you've done it a couple of times, if they're still very stiff and anxious, that could be a potential sign of a retained Moro reflex. So this is a great one to include into the daily routine. I love that you mentioned if they're still anxious and nervous after a couple of times doing this. Because we need to make sure we're giving them a chance to learn to modulate that input and it's okay to be nervous to try new things. But if they aren't kind of getting the hang of it and feeling more comfortable after they try it, that's when we're like, Okay, let's look into this a little bit more.
Jessica:
Yes.
Rachel:
All right, number 10. Are y'all just so excited to go get your therapy balls and try these? You shouldn't be and so while you're laying on the floor, your feet are close to the wall, you're going to grab the therapy ball, and you're going to walk the ball up the wall using just the feet. So you can walk it up, you can walk to the left, to the right, but the goal is that you're using your feet to keep the ball on the wall so it's not falling down. You can modify this one to use a balloon or a playground ball. For younger kiddos with balloons or any ball, you can write on with like a dry erase marker, or something that safe, stickers you can put on the ball, you can have them rotate the ball to try to tap the stickers or tap the letters with their feet. You can have them, again, kind of like the supine therapy ball kicks, hold their head up off the ground, cross their arms on their chest, work that neck flexion strength, that TLR forward pattern. So this is a fun one.
Jessica:
I really liked this one for that bilateral coordination of the feet. I'm just thinking of using this in the clinic with certain clientsbecause when we walk when we crawl, and we do animal walks, we use a reciprocal pattern with our legs. But if there's challenges in a variety of areas, there might not be that reciprocal pattern. So this is a great activity to work on that because your child's going to have to alternate their feet in order to roll the ball around on the wall. So it really works on that reciprococity. That might be the right word. You think it would be better with words since we talk all the time.
Rachel:
No.
Jessica:
But also you could put targets on the wall that the child has to roll the ball to certain targets. You could do it as like a memory game where you have colors on the wall, and you give them a sequence of colors that they have to roll the ball to so working on some auditory memory. Lots of ways to to use these activities and modify them to meet the child's needs.
Rachel:
So if you're curious, where we got all of these great activity ideas from our heads, way back in 2019, when Jess and I were treating in a church, you heard that right? Yep. We created this little course. We were like, Hey, let's teach other parents and therapists how to use a therapy ball. So we came up with 30 therapy ball activities and we only share 10 today. So there are 20 more that you didn't hear about. But those are in our gross motor skills course available on Harkla, we'll put a link in the description. Just a little disclaimer, right now, the course is very old school.
Jessica:
It's so old.
Rachel:
Graphics have changed a lot in the past five years.
Jessica:
But the content is good.
Rachel:
The content is gold. What did someone say about us? Pediatric sensory gold, right? Isn't that what she said.
Jessica:
Something like that.
Rachel:
Something like that? Yeah. Yeah. So anyways,
Jessica:
Yeah, so in this course, the gross motor skills course, we have those 30 activities with a therapy ball. We have 15 activities with a scooter board, which we've done podcasts or YouTube video on scooter board before as well. There are 15 activities with hula hoops and then there's like 10 to 20 activities with a Bosu ball like that balancing Bosu ball, and then a couple of different bonus activities. So this gross motor skills activity course, even though it is so like old and basic, the content is really good and it's great. If you're a therapist. It just gives you a ton of different activities that you can use with all of your clients of all ages.
Rachel:
And it's so funny because all the things as therapists, all the things, but it's like, you almost need like a refresher like even just like creating this podcast. It's like, oh, try this. Try that.
Jessica:
I know. I was just thinking about rainbow pass. I was like, I don't know if I've done rainbow pass with most of my clients right now. So I need to do that one next week.
Rachel:
Yeah. So hopefully you liked this format and hopefully y'all can send us a message and be like, Hey, bring back the activity podcast.
Jessica:
I said it was great. Oh my gosh. Okay, we're moving on. We're all done. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, let us know, take a screenshot, and tag us we're at all things sensory podcast on Instagram. If you try these activities, take a video, take a picture, send it to us, tag us on Instagram. Let us know what piece of equipment we should do a podcast episode on next.
Rachel:
And Jessica's leaving me now.
Jessica:
And that's it. I'm out of here.
Rachel:
Okay, thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of crazy Rachel, and.
Jessica:
We'll plan on talking to you next week. Bye.
Rachel:
Thank you so much for listening to All Things Sensory by Harkla.
Jessica:
If you want more information on anything mentioned in the show, head over to Harkla.co/podcast to get the show notes.
Rachel:
If you have any follow up questions, the best place to ask those is in the comments on the show notes or message us on our Instagram account, which is at Harkla_family or at all things sensory podcast. If you just search Harkla, you'll find us there.
Jessica:
Like we mentioned before our podcast listeners get 10% off their first order at Harkla. Whether it's for one of our digital courses or one of our sensory swings, the discount code sensory will get you 10% off.
Rachel:
Head to Harkla.co/sensory to use that discount code right now.
Jessica:
We are so excited to work together to help create confident kids all over the world. While we make every effort to share correct information we're still learning.
Rachel:
We will double check all of our facts but realize that medicine is a constantly changing science and art.
Jessica:
One doctor or therapist may have a different way of doing things from another.
Rachel:
We are simply presenting our views and opinions on how to address common sensory challenges, health related difficulties, and what we have found to be beneficial that will be as evidence based as possible.
Jessica:
By listening to this podcast you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or your child.
Rachel:
Consult your child's pediatrician or therapist for any medical issues that he or she may be having.
Jessica:
This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast.