Small Apartment or Home Coordination Drills for Kids
Whenever you’re at home, you can use your free time to improve your coordination, motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and ball-handling skills.
Here are 9 Areas of Focus To Improve Your Coordination:
- Focus on your drill
- Have fun
- Don’t get frustrated
- Embrace the challenge
- Look for small improvements in your child
- Use your imagination
- Focus on control
- Practice consistently
- Maintain a playing posture (knees bent, hips lowered, shoulders back )
What coordination exercises can I do at home?
Watch these exercises that can be done in a small space to improve your coordination.
20 Balance and Coordination Drills You Can Do at Home With Tennis Balls
- Basic Side To Side Tennis Ball Bounce
- Single Hand Tennis Ball Dribbling
- Double Hand Tennis Ball Dribbling
- Double Hand Tennis Ball Cris Cross
- Through The Legs Tennis Ball
- Jump Rope
- Under Hand Wall Bounce
- Person To Person Under Single Hand Throws
- Walking Alternating Tennis Ball Bounces
- Partner Tennis Ball Catches
- Handstand To Tennis Ball Catch
- Double Hand Tennis Ball Cris Cross To Double Underhand Catch
- Single Hand Ball Toss and Catch (not on video)
- Double Hand Ball Toss and Catch (not on video)
- Partner Double Tennis Ball Catches (not on video)
- Person To Person Under Hand To High Throws (not on video)
- Over Hand Wall Bounce (not on video)
- Back Turned Until Ball Is Thrown (not on video)
- Juggling (not on video)
- Dribble In One Had While Catching In The Other (not on video)
What are coordination and balance?
Balance is the ability to react, respond, and maintain a controlled body position during movements, whether they are predicted or unexpected move.
Balance during a performance and functional activities can include walking, reaching for a cup, sitting down, standing up, running, and jumping.
Even simple activities, such as getting into a car, can become challenging if your balance is compromised. If you are attempting to maintain balance while doing necessary activities like sitting at a dinner table, walking upstairs, riding an elevator, walking on rocks or wet concrete, or carrying objects up to your doorstep, you will need to have balance and confidence in your body.
Children can sometimes have problems with balance and coordination as they grow into their bodies. They may struggle to maintain control and stay on their feet while attempting seemingly simple tasks. This can be stressful for parents, as you are always wondering if your child will injure themselves.
For children to function effectively across multiple environments like playgrounds and school activities, they will need to develop necessary motor skills, and parents can help them.
Children can learn how to better control their bodies with practice, and we can help you with this. We all need the ability to maintain proper body positions during both still and moving activities. Additionally, we need to be able to respond quickly to unexpected environmental stresses without injuring ourselves.
Static body balance is the ability to hold a static, stationary position with controlled, safe body posture. Dynamic balance is the ability to keep a balanced body while moving, such as when you run, jump, ride a bike, trip, get pushed, or walk on unstable ground.
Why are balance and coordination important?
Developing essential age-appropriate balance and movement coordination allows the child to be involved and more confident in sports participation.
This increase in body control will allow them to increase the chances of a high level of athletic success, as it aids fluid body movement for physical skill performance (e.g., walking a balance beam or playing football).
A child’s involvement in sport helps improve, maintain, develop and create a better sense of self-control and provides more confidence when completing daily activities. This confidence helps the child socially, which further improves their mental and physical health.
Using sport to develop balance and coordination can give the child a level of fulfillment and a sense of achievement, confidence, and community. Often even if they are still struggling athletically, the fact they are participating in sport will give them the confidence to fail and grow gracefully.
Why Should You Use Sports To Develop Balance and Coordination?
Using sport as a developmental tool also helps young children develop and maintain properly controlled body movement during high-stress activities, which prepares them to function at a high level when other movement stressors arise.
Sport is a great tool. Nothing too serious; examples like tumbling and running at the park are useful in developing better coordination in your child. With the right balance and coordination, your child is less likely to be injured due to bad posture and body mechanics. Balance and coordination are essential to living a productive life, and developing exceptional levels of balance and coordination is required to be an elite athlete.
Why are balance and coordination important?
Developing essential age-appropriate balance and movement coordination allows the child to be involved and more confident in sports participation. This increase in body control will allow them to increase the chances of a high level of athletic success, as it aids fluid body movement for physical skill performance (e.g. walking a balance beam or playing football).
A child’s involvement in sport helps create a better sense of self-control. It gives them more confidence when completing daily activities as well as developing a social network that is congruent with being healthy mentally and physically. Using sport to develop balance and coordination can give the child a level of fulfillment and a sense of achievement, confidence, and community.
With the right balance and coordination, your child is less likely to be injured cause an injury or have injuries occur due to bad posture and body mechanics. Balance and coordination are essential to living a productive life, and it does take you to be an elite athlete to develop reasonable levels of balance and coordination.
What are the building blocks essential to developing balance and coordination in children and adults?
Bilateral integration:
Using two hands together with one hand leading: e.g., holding a tennis racquet with the non-dominant hand with the ‘helping’ non-dominant hand-holding and stabilizing only between hits.
Focus and concentration:
The ability to maintain your mental, physical, and spiritual attention to a specific goal for a reasonable period is one of the essential components for success in life and sport.
Body Awareness:
The body is a fantastic creation, and being aware, knowing, relating, and positioning your body parts in space to other objects is essential to negotiate the spacial environment we live in.
Crossing Mid-line:
The physical and mental awareness to cross the invisible line running from the child’s nose to the pelvis that divides the body into left and right sides, which also influences hand dominance.
Hand-eye coordination:
The physical and mental ability to process information received from the eyes to control, use, guide, manipulate, and direct the hands to perform specific tasks.
Hand Dominance:
The consistent use of one (usually the same) hand for task performance, which is necessary to allow refined skills to develop.
Muscular strength:
A muscle’s ability to exert force against resistance (e.g., when climbing a tree to push or pull up).
Muscular endurance:
The ability of a single muscle or group of muscles to exert force repeatedly against resistance to allow sustained physical task engagement.
Self-regulation:
The ability to obtain, maintain, and change alertness level appropriate for a task or situation, which then allows better attention to the job.
Postural Control:
The ability to stabilize the trunk and neck to enable coordination of the limbs for controlled task performance.
Body Awareness (Proprioception):
The information that the brain receives from the muscles and joints to make us aware of body position and body movement, which in turn allows skills to become ‘automatic.’
Sensory processing:
The accurate processing of sensory stimulation in the environment as well as in our own body for quick and physically appropriate responses to movement.
Isolated movement:
The ability to move an arm or leg while keeping the remainder of the body still needed for refined movement (e.g., throwing a ball on handed or swimming)
What necessary activities can help improve coordination and balance?
Bike and scooter:
Both of these fitness and child play activities help children develop coordination and balance. Riding a bike requires the child to make the core and balance adjustments to maintain balance continually.
Riding a bike used to be a significant milestone in childhood development sadly parents have replaced a bike with the TV nevertheless using some of the tried and true methods of our childhood experience give be beneficial for our children in today’s landscape.
Walking on Unequal surfaces:
Walking and stepping over unstable surfaces can help you develop better balance. You can practice at home by laying clothes on the floor, pillows, socks, blankets that make you focus on stabilizing your core and maintaining proper balance.
Unstable Swings:
Swings, ladders, park climbers that continuously move can promote coordination and balance control. This constant moving and swinging motion makes the brain focus on the present and requires you to pay attention to your body. Climbing ladders, army climber ropes, and jungle gyms are perfect examples. When the rope swings and moves in unexpected ways, it forces you to maintain control of your core muscles and to stabilize your body to work harder.
Swimming:
Swimming requires the body to work against the water-resistance of the water; this results in producing improved body awareness where the body is in a safe space.
Kneeling on a ball:
You can do this without hands and additionally move your arms in different directions while balancing on your knees.
Old School Hopscotch:
This requires you to hop on one leg land on the other and switch leg movements in differing directions. This is a great tool to develop athleticism.
Rock stepping stone games:
Many parks have rocks located several feet apart that require you to step or make small jumps to the next stone. Most of the time, parks will use sand or shredded bark as a padded surface to limit impact should you fall. Use discretion as this is more advanced and requires more balance and coordination. Using no steps in between rocks and jumps requires more coordination.
Learn more about sports and life.