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 hula hoop!
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 7 favorite activities using hula hoops!
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 avariety 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 hula hoop!
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 7 favorite activities using hula hoops!
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 avariety 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!
We're going to use hula hoops as tunnels but you can again suspend the hula hoops or I think we kind of squeezed them between benches so that way they would be suspended and that way it's a really good cause and effect. If while the child is going through the tunnels, they bump into them, they'll probably fall down. But what you could do is have three or four or five, however many hula hoops, you have suspend them all and you could bear crawl through them, you can crab walk through them, you can step through them, but really great for increasing that body awareness. So that way they know where their their body is. So that way they're not bumping through or bumping into the hula hoops, and they're really recognizing where they are and they're slowing down, which is really hard for a lot of kids. 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:
Hold on before we jump into today's episode, we are so excited to finally announce the launch of our newly redone course Early Intervention Blueprint: Sensory and Developmental Milestones for Infants and Toddlers. This course has been in the making for six plus months. We've had it done previously. We completely redid it, updated it, added to it, and now professionals, occupational therapists and assistants, can earn 1.1 AOTA CEUs after they complete this course. Which means it's 11 hours of video demonstrations, teaching, lectures, videos, pictures, and you get a workbook as well. It is an absolute game changer for new parents, for expecting parents, who are learning how to best support their child's sensory and primitive reflex development. Which one thing that we get asked so often is can we incorporate primitive reflex integration for this population birth to three to four years old. In our other primitive reflex course, we focus on kiddos five and up. But this course here, our Early Intervention Blueprint, covers reflex integration for infants and toddlers. It tells you everything you need to know about developmental milestones, sensory milestones, sensory activities, sensory play for babies and toddlers. It is the jackpot that everyone, every parent, every therapist, every, you know, anyone who works with kiddos, daycare, preschool, everyone needs to take this course in our opinion. So it is officially launched. We will put everything you need to know in the show notes of this episode, so you can check it out. Hey there, welcome back to All Things Sensory by Harkla. We're so happy to have you here again today for another fabulous podcast.
Jessica:
We're both sick. I'm closer on the mend, like towards the being better than Rachel is. unfortunately. I'm so sorry.
Rachel:
Yeah, I'm sorry for everyone listening because I'm like super nasally and just like.
Jessica:
That's how a lot of our episodes were at the beginning of 2024 because I was sick.
Rachel:
2023.
Jessica:
No, the beginning of 2024.
Rachel:
Oh, this year?
Jessica:
Yes.
Rachel:
We only recorded like twice though.
Jessica:
But it was the episodes we recorded before Christmas.
Rachel:
Oh. Yes, yeah, that's right.
Jessica:
We batch record and I was sick at the time. So all the there's like three or four episodes that came out at the beginning of the year where I was sick and now we're gonna have like four or five episodes where Rachel is sick.
Rachel:
Love this.
Jessica:
So everyone who listens to us on a regular basis. I'm sure you can tell when one of us is sick.
Rachel:
Yeah.
Jessica:
I would imagine so.
Rachel:
I would hope. We don't normally sound, I mean, I don't normally sound because you sound fine. You had laryngitis last week tough.
Jessica:
I lost my voice completely for like a day.
Rachel:
Totally move things around.
Jessica:
It sucked and then yesterday I was coughing and couldn't stop coughing. Anyways.
Rachel:
We're here. We're doing it. We're sharing some fantastic information for you regardless. Look at us putting our lives on the line for all of you.
Jessica:
You're welcome.
Rachel:
Wow, we really don't get paid enough for this.
Jessica:
We should start a Patreon so people can help us out.
Rachel:
Oh geez.
Jessica:
Anyways, we're gonna give you seven therapeutic activities with a hula hoop today. Now, we have a little mini activity course. It's our gross motor skills course that we made many, many years ago. Way back in the day. Rachel said she was watching the videos to kind of create the outline for this episode, and just how different they are compared to the videos we make now.
Rachel:
I mean, the content is great. Like I was watching them, I was like, Oh my gosh, that's a great idea. Oh, they're our ideas so that's nice. But like, the content is great. It's just Crash, the dog, he's running around with us and we're just I mean, we honestly haven't changed much. We're still like our normal, personality filled selves, I guess. But.
Jessica:
Our videos are just a little more professional looking.
Rachel:
They're just more professional now that we have a team behind that.
Jessica:
Yeah.
Rachel:
Yeah. Which Thank goodness.
Jessica:
Yes.
Rachel:
So anyways, that is where the inspiration for this episode came from. So if you are a therapist, and you're looking for new, novel, different intervention strategies, definitely check out our skills courses. And then we're going to be revamping them soon xo that way, you won't have to see all of the good old days.
Jessica:
Kind of nostalgic.
Rachel:
It really is. Yeah.
Jessica:
Yes. So these seven activities that we're going to
Rachel:
So the first one is kind of a classic one, but we like to talk to you about today are great for therapists working in the clinic. These are great for maybe like a PE teacher in the call it jump rope with a hula hoop. So what you're going to do schools. This is great for parents if you're looking for fun activities to engage your child in. A lot of these activities are really great to do with a partner. You can add them into obstacle courses. There's a lot of good ways to do these ones. So make sure you go get a couple of hula hoops. Oh, that's the other thing. Some of these do require more than one hulu hoop. So if you're ready to jump into these activities, make is use your hula hoops, or just one hula hoop, and you're going sure you have at least three hula hoops to do these activities with. to stand in front of it, and you're going to kind of step over it and then swing it around behind you and jump over it. Just like you would with a normal jump rope and the cool thing about this one is you are working on this underlying skill of coordinating both sides of the body and timing and sequency. Because for most kiddos, especially the ones that we work with it OT, jumping rope is a really difficult skill. So this is a good way to practice and prepare for future jump roping skills or if you're working on jump roping with a kiddo, then you can incorporate jumping rope, quote unquote rope with a hula hoop as like a preparatory activity to help them kind of get that mojo and that that bilateral coordination going and the timing going.
Jessica:
All right, the next activity is to suspend the hula hoop, so just one hula hoop, between two items. So I think in our video, we had two chairs or two stools, and we used string to suspend the hula hoop between the two chairs. So it's a couple of inches off the floor. It's like upright, so it's like a target to throw through and you do like an over-under tossing through the hula hoops. So you can have your child stand a couple of feet away from the hula hoop, facing away from the hula hoop, and maybe you toss a beanbag to them, they catch it, and then they bend over to look down between their legs. Look at their target, which is the hula hoop, and throw the beanbag through the hula hoop. This is a really a great visual-vestibular activity. It's going to work on balance and postural control. It's going to work on timing and force modulation and follow it up with some sort of heavy work. Because going upside down, that inverted position, is very alerting and so especially if you have a child who is over stimulated easily by vestibular input, you're going to want to help regulate the nervous system with some heavy work afterwards.
Rachel:
You know what I was just thinking if you are in the clinic or in the school setting and you're a therapist working in with kids, if you do like themed weeks, we used to do themed weeks. Do you do themed weeks to do theme our weeks at the clinic? You do.
Jessica:
Yes.
Rachel:
I was thinking it'd be fun to do a hula hoop themed week and you just have all of the activities involve hula hoops.
Jessica:
I mean, it's such a great idea.
Rachel:
Thank you. I know.
Jessica:
Probably going to do it.
Rachel:
Probably gonna do it and you can do all these activities. You can have all set up. There's so many ways that you use hula hoops and have a hula hoop themed week. Yeah, that's right. You write it down, Jessica.
Jessica:
I'm going to text the owner of the clinic that I work at and be like, hey,
Rachel:
We need to get some hula hoops.
Jessica:
Do we have hula hoops?
Rachel:
Do we have 47 hula hoops?
Jessica:
We are also moving the clinic right now. So everything's kind of a mess. But.
Rachel:
Okay, well, while you do that, I was talking about the next one, which is more of a cognitive task using hula hoops. I know who would have thought. But if you grab two hula hoops, and you put them overlapping, what does it look like? A venn diagram. So what we're going to do is use our venn diagram to complete a functional task. So we can decide that we're going to find items. We're going to match them by color. So we're going to put all of the red items in the left hula hoop, and then all the blue items in the blue hula hoop, and then what is blue and red make purple. So then you put the purple items in the middle or the soft items and the hard items, and then the semi-soft items. And so you can go around the room and try to find these things. You can do animal walks to go find them, you can go on a scooter board adventure, you can hop, you can do whatever you need to do to work on your underlying goals to gather the items, to put them in the venn diagram, and then you get to sit down and have a conversation and chat about what you chose and why. You can have multiple kids do this together and they have to work as a team. They have to discuss what their thoughts were. They have to do more of that perspective taking. So there's a lot of ways that you can go with this one. But just using the hula hoops as your venn diagram as the starting point.
Jessica:
I would love to do this with magnet letters or not necessary magnet letters, but like tile letters. Just any sort of little letters that you would use for activities and maybe you put all of the capital letters in the left hula hoop and all of the lowercase letters in the right hula hoop and then in the middle, you see which letters have similarities. So maybe in the middle, you put all of the letters that have a big line, or you put the letters that have one big curve, have one curve, one big curve, or one little curve for the lowercase letters. And so you can actually work on some really great handwriting skills with this too.
Rachel:
Boom. I love that.
Jessica:
Okay, next number four, is a teamwork transfer. So you and your partner and if you can get enough people to create like a circle with this activity would be great. You're all holding hands in a circlea nd the hula hoop is, like, suspended in your hands. Right? Does that make sense?
Rachel:
Yeah, like if you're holding hands, the hula hoop is like over your hands.
Jessica:
It's like on your arms and you're going to use teamwork, problem solving, communication, to figure out how to get the hula hoop all the way around the circle without anybody letting go of hands.
Rachel:
Great body awareness, activity, great teamwork activities, social skills, functional communication. There's so many fun underlying skills to work on with this one. Okay, the next one, we're going to use hula hoops as tunnels. Shocker, I know. But you can again suspend the hula hoops or I think we kind of squeezed them between benches so that way they would be suspended, and that way, it's a really good cause and effect. If while the child is going through the tunnels, they bump into them, they'll probably fall down. But what you could do is have like three or four or five, however many hula hoops, you have suspend them all. Then, you could bear crawl through them, you can crab walk through them, you can step through them, but really great for increasing that body awareness so that way they know where their their body is. So that way they're not bumping through or bumping into the hula hoops and they're really recognizing where they are and they're slowing down, which is really hard for a lot of kids.
Jessica:
Number six is to create a clock inside of the hula hoop. A couple of ways you can do this, you can have the child lay on their back inside of the hula hoop, especially if you have a really large hula hoop, and they can use their arms, their legs to position into the different locations that would need to be for a different time that you give them. You could also have them use like sticks or spatulas or any straight item and put it in the clock. Maybe they even have to make the clock with little number magnets and they put the number magnets around the clock and then they had the little sticks and they're going to move it around to tell what time it is. This is great for our elementary school age. Third and up ages when they're starting to tell time on and is it analog clock?
Rachel:
I feel like no one knows how to read those anymore.
Jessica:
Yeah, they're really tricky. So this is a great skill. It's an executive functioning skill to really identify what the different numbers mean, what they represent, what the time of day is for different activities. This is also a lot of visual perception and spatial awareness, especially if you are having the child use number tiles, number magnets to create the clock, and they have to position the numbers in a specific place, in a specific distance away from another number, et cetera, et cetera.
Rachel:
Yeah, it's also really interesting. I was thinking about my husband's grandpa after his stroke. His stroke patients, one of the tests that they do is to have them put the numbers on the clock and you'll see that like, left side of neglect, or the right side neglect, and they'll only put the clock numbers on one side of the clock. and they're all bunched together. And you can see that with kids too, who are lacking the awareness of both sides of their body. Or maybe if you are working with kiddos who have had strokes, you can notice those subtle patterns and asking them to do a task like this is a really eye opening way to see what is your visual perception like. What is your spatial awareness like? What is your problem solving like? All of those underlying skills, and that's what we mean by underlying skills like these, telling the time is like the main skill. But you have to have all of the little skills in order to be able to do so and if something's challenging or missing, it's going to be really hard to successfully do that main task, like telling the telling the time.
Jessica:
I was also thinking for kids who are maybe too young to learn that full big skill just because they haven't processed all of it yet. They're not at the age to learn that yet. You can just have them copy a picture of a clock or a real clock on the wall, and work on some of those pre-time telling, pre-writing skills of just looking and matching and Every time. copying.
Rachel:
Love that. Okay, the last one. Number seven. This might be my favorite. I think it is. We call this island hopping and what you're gonna do is you're gonna stand in one hula hoop and you're going to hold your other hula hoop. This is what two hula hoops. You're gonna hold the other hula hoop and set it down in front of you. Then you're gonna step into the hula hoop that you just sat down, or they're gonna turn around, pick up the hula hoop, you just stepped out of, pick it up, put it in front of you, step into the next one, pick up the first one, pick it up, put it in front of you. You're picking up what I'm putting down, literally. And this one's so Because it's fun. It's fun. Someone has to go into the cool, because you're going from point A to point B, and you're only able to step inside the hula hoops. This might work better with smaller hula hoops for smaller kiddos, or rings of some sort. But they are only able to step inside the hula hoops. So they have to move one at a time and think about what your body is doing, think about what your head is doing, what your eyes are doing with this one. You're bending over, standing up, bending over, looking down, looking up, looking down, looking up. You're getting a lot of vestibular input and this is what I noticed whenever I do this one is I'm like almost a little dizzy afterwards, or I'm a little more alert or awake. Because I've gotten so many different head position changes and our vestibular system is just totally awoken by all of that input. It's like, oh, wow, okay, here I am. I'm awake, I'm alive. I'm a threat, I'm thriving. I'm a thriving. And we're ready to rock and roll. So this is another good preparatory activity to wake up the body before you go do a table task. You can set up an obstacle course they have to transfer something from point A to point B. So it's just a fun, silly activity. You can have races too. If you want to raise the child or have peers race each other, that's another fun one to do. But also you can slow it down and see if you could do the movements really controlled to so now the fun one. Island hopping. Hopefully you could visualize all of these when we're talking about though. I know we've joked in the past about Jessica giving me a hard time about these. bus, might as well be you.
Jessica:
Hopefully this episode was helpful. Hopefully you can try some of these activities. If you enjoyed this episode, you can leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Definitely share this episode with a friend, fellow therapist. If you're a parent listening, share this with your child's therapist. Your child's teacher, PE teacher. Share this with anybody who has kids.
Rachel:
Yep. And with that we will plan on chatting with you next Wednesday. Remember a new podcast drops every Wednesday. If you prefer YouTube videos, we do a new YouTube video every Tuesday. Lots of good things coming your way and we'll plan on chatting with you then.
Jessica:
Okay, 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. That's s e n s o r y.
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.