Advice to improve your movement, fitness, and overall health from the world's #1 in orthopedics.
Resources for Families with Young Children at Home
Learn ways to engage with your children and make sure that they stay active at home to help promote healthy growth and development.
Advice to improve your movement, fitness, and overall health from the world's #1 in orthopedics.
From our family to yours, here are some ideas from the HSS Pediatric Rehabilitation team that you and your children can try at home to stay active, engage with each other and foster growth and development.
- Create structure. Help your child feel reassured to understand "what's coming next" by mirroring activities that would have occurred under normal circumstances.
- Have a routine. Make a daily schedule. Choose activities together. Incorporate time for play and movement. During activities, promote learning and development by giving directions or asking specific questions. (See activities below for more ideas.)
- Model behavior. Set an example for what you would like to see in your child.
- Engage in daily routines. Give your child responsibilities, such as setting the table or cleaning up after meals, making their bed or helping with meal preparation or baking.
- Use a multisensory learning approach. Children are multisensory learners—they use their vision, touch and movement systems to learn. Engage with your child in their schoolwork by creating a hands-on science experiment, take a “trip" to the moon, “visit” a historic site or make up a story and act it out.
- Set up for success. Organize your space to help your child navigate their day safely and efficiently.
- Take advantage of technology. Set up a video chat or start a Google doc for virtual pen pal letters with a friend or family member.
Published 12/2/2020
