Last Updated on April 13, 2023 by Mike Robinson
In this article, we provide activities for children with Down syndrome that can help you improve the skills of these children. Do you have any students or children with Down syndrome and want to help develop their skills? There are many exercises they can benefit from that will help develop the skills they need for day-to-day life.
To reach their full potential, it is important for them to practice not only the skills they already possess but also the ones with which they are struggling.
Improving focus is important if you want to be fully independent. This is important for everyone, but it is especially important for people with disabilities. Here are two exercises that can help kids with Down syndrome improve their attention span:
1. Tell me a story.
Procedure: If you want to get kids to pay more attention, you can tell them a story and then ask them questions about the main characters and what happened. To do this, you need to tell a story you like and make people interested in it. Most of the time, fables are more fun, and they can also teach you something. When the teacher is done telling the story or fable, he or she must ask the kids questions to make sure they have learned and understood what was said. So, questions such as “Who is the main character?” What does he go by? What’s wrong with him? They will help us figure out how well people understand.
Material: Tales and fables. Here you can find more than 20 short fables for children.
Tips: The teacher has to act out the parts of the characters and change his voice while telling the story. This will make the activity more fun and get the kids interested. Depending on how smart the kids are and how much they understand, they will also ask them relevant questions.
2. We are musicians!
Procedure: This exercise for children with Down syndrome is quite fun. These children can learn and pay more attention by listening to music. Listening to songs is one of the best ways to do it. Children have to do different exercises while listening, like clapping, jumping, moving their hands up, etc.
The best way to do this is to mix different kinds of music with different beats. You can also do this kind of exercise with percussion instruments like a triangle or drum.
The idea would be the same, which is that they touch them to the beat of the music. The way I’ve always done this activity is by putting the kids in a circle so that they can move around and follow the beat of the music more easily. If any of them fails, they will be taken out of the game, and their partners will help them finish the task.
Material: Musical instruments, in case you prefer to do the activity this way.
Tips: For the activity to be more exciting, it is best to switch between the different kinds of songs, starting with ones with a slow beat and ending with ones with a faster beat. In this way, the difficulty level will go up.
Activities to Improve Motor Skills.
Children with Down syndrome need to do activities that use both their fine and gross motor skills. Certain exercises can strengthen the muscles in their fingers and hands. This is so they can use them to do more things on their own. Here are some activities that you can use:
3. Cutting paper into rows to make balls
Procedure: We can also help our students improve their psychological skills by cutting newspaper pages in a horizontal direction along lines that we have drawn on them first. This will help them figure out how to hold scissors and what they are for. They can also follow the lines we’ve drawn with a marker, which helps them pay attention and improve their coordination. Once they’ve cut out all of the newspaper pages, they have to make balls of different sizes, one strip at a time. This will let them move their fingers and wrists in new ways and help them develop their fine motor skills the right way. Then, you can use these paper balls to decorate drawings and thus perform another activity to work fine motor skills.
Materials: newspaper, scissors, marker, and glue.
Tips: We need to show them how to use the scissors properly so they don’t hurt themselves. Also, make sure you separate the children with enough space for them to work safely.
4. Punching holes for fun
Procedure:
This activity for children with Down syndrome involves making holes. Let’s look at some printables that you can use to help your kids build fine motor skills, hand strength, and hand-eye coordination in a fun and exciting way. Kids have fun when you let them use a paper punch. Hole-punching activities are also a great way to help kids with Down syndrome build hand strength and finger control, which will help them as they learn to use scissors and hold pencils.
Just giving kids paper and a paper puncher and letting them make whatever they want is fun. You can also give them printables to keep them going and give them more goals. Hand-eye coordination can also be improved by punching holes in the circles on the printables. One of my favorite things to do with a hole punch is also one of the easiest: punching strips.
Materials: To carry out this activity, it will be necessary to use hole punches and different sizes and shapes of paper with different pictures and designs on them.
Distribution: It is recommended that, to have the class controlled in this activity, you place the children on a large table so that you can supervise their movements.
Tips: If this is their first time taking a punch, we will have to show them how to hold and use it so that they don’t hurt themselves. We will also have to show them because, in most cases, just telling them how to do something is not enough. At the start of the activity, they will practice by punching a lot of holes. Then, tell them how to punch out pre-made designs on paper.
5. How many objects are in the bag?
Procedure: The kids will be split up into different groups. Then, give them bags filled with different-sized objects. They must empty out the contents of the bag while counting the objects. The winning group will be the one that finishes taking out and counting the objects first. Each member of that group can then choose one of the toys or objects to play with at recess.
Materials: The materials needed for this activity can be class objects or toys. The important thing is that they are of different sizes in order to exercise their motor skills.
Tips: To make it more enjoyable, the teachers could play music during this activity. Additionally, it would also be advisable to divide the children into mixed groups with different cognitive levels so that they can help each other during the activity.
6. Pass the ball through the hoop.
Procedure: “Pass the ball through the hoop” is another thing I usually do to work on gross motor skills. The kids have to stand in two rows, and one at a time, they have to pick up one of the balls and toss it through the hoop that goes with it (the balls will have the same color as the hoop that must be passed).
Materials: rings and balls of different sizes and colors.
Tips: The teacher has to mix up the balls and rings, making sure that the position they may be in gives no clues as to which ball is for which hoop. The only way to tell is by its color.
Activities for Children with Down Syndrome to Improve Language Skills
Learning to communicate effectively is crucial for the independence of people with Down syndrome. Therefore, it’s crucial to engage in actions that require the use of language. Here are two things you can do:
7. We are actors!
Procedure: One of the language-building exercises for children with Down syndrome is to stage small plays in which each student plays a role and speaks in short phrases. For easier comprehension, these brief tales must be drawn from daily life. Examples include casual conversation with your friend about her boyfriend, the clothes they recently purchased, etc.
It is suggested that they complete this activity in pairs because doing it this way makes them less nervous.
Materials: In order to carry out this activity, materials will not be necessary; just the script of the child’s story will be enough.
Tips: The teacher needs to pay attention and clear up any questions that come up. At first, they might not be able to follow the instructions and may interrupt their partner’s turn. This is because they are so impulsive. So, this activity will help them learn how to talk to each other properly.
8. What did we do yesterday?
Procedure: We will now talk about some of the other things I do when I want to work on their language skills. From my point of view, it’s an activity that they usually enjoy a lot and that helps them get to know each other better.
The students have to talk about what they did after school the day before, one by one. They need to think about what they want to say and put it together in a logical way.
Material: To carry out this activity, no material will be necessary.
Tips: The teacher has to pay close attention to what his students say in case they get stuck. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to give some simple instructions on how to talk to classmates about what they did the day before. The teacher could start this exercise by telling the class what they did the day before as an example. This will give them an idea of how they should do it.
Activities to Develop Independence
A variety of games, such as the coin game, can be created to help people with Down syndrome practice and develop their independence. It could be helpful to let them take charge of some of the things we normally do at home and at school.
Here are some activities that can help you develop your independence:
9. We go to the market.
Procedure: To help children with Down syndrome become more independent and confident in their own abilities, teachers can model a wide range of real-world scenarios in the classroom. To achieve this goal, we can play out scenarios like them going grocery shopping.
The kids will need to work in pairs, with one playing the role of the seller and the other that of the buyer. The next step is for them to behave as they normally would from the moment they walk in the door of the supermarket or store until they leave with their purchases.
This allows us to observe the buyer’s and seller’s natural interactions in the hypothetical situation.
Materials: To carry out this activity, some toys will be necessary; these are what our students will really buy. If you intend to have them pretend to shop at a grocery store, then use fruits and vegetables.
Tips: The teacher has to keep an eye on the activity at all times because at first the kids will go to the fruit bowl. However, the purpose of the game is to teach interaction skills and how to talk to each other.
So, you must first show them how to talk to each other in a smart way and give them a list of phrases they should always use. When you get somewhere, you might say “good morning.” You have to ask, “Could I get a kilo of bananas?” if you want to buy something.
10. How much is it worth?
People with Down syndrome also need to learn how to handle money in order to become more independent. For this reason, we also need to do exercises of this kind.
Procedure: A good way to teach children with Down syndrome how to use coins and paper money is to give them real-life problems. The more real-life the problems are, the easier it is for them to understand how to solve them. One clear example would be to write a math problem like the one below on the blackboard:
Luisa wants to buy a pair of pants and a shirt. The trousers cost $10 and the shirt $6. If you have $20, can you buy them? How much do you have left? How much do the two costs in total?
To make it easier for them to carry out this activity, they will be provided with real-looking money in the form of bills and coins. This is usually very useful because they have a hard time imagining the value of the coins.
Materials: coins and bills that simulate the real thing; paper; pencil; and eraser.
Tips: For this exercise to work, you need to know how much each currency is worth on a basic level. So, you can break up this activity with short, easy explanations, starting with the coins with the least value and ending with the ones with the most.
Also read: How to Treat Autistic Children: 23 Effective Tips
Once you’ve told them what the values mean, you can help them put this new information to use by giving them problems like these and teaching them how to make change and count money.
