Physical: side to side movement, agility, balance, lower extremity coordination, gross motor skill

Cognitive: sustained attention

Social: turn taking (if doing activity with more than one person)

one

optional: cones or masking tape

1. child steps side-to-side to the left and to the right

This activity might not be suitable for people who use wheelchairs. “Wheelchair Friendly Activities” has a list of activities that are easy to adapt for wheelchair users. This list isn’t exhaustive, so we invite you to come up with your own creative ideas to make any activity work for you. If you have an idea on how to make this or any other activity more accessible for wheelchair users, We’d love to hear your ideas on how to make this or any other activity accessible for wheelchair users. Thank you for helping make play more inclusive!

Change the environment: use cones to mark the distance that the child must side step to decrease cognitive demand 

Change the task:

• have the child do 1-3 side steps only to decrease physical demand
• have the child hold the coach’s hand to complete the activity to decrease physical demand

Change the environment:

• have child complete the activity in a noisy room to increase cognitive demand
• complete activity with more children to increase social demand

Change the task:

• have the child look straight ahead while side stepping to increase physical demand 
• encourage the child to side step then shuffle to increase physical and cognitive demand 
• have the child change directions while side stepping (e.g., 3 side steps to left, 3 side steps to right) to increase physical and cognitive demand

• the child will be able to side-step for 10 steps in both directions (left and right) while looking forward
• I can side-step