With one week of the holidays left the best thing you could do today is to encourage your child to go out and skateboard…or swim or bike…

What many people don’t know is that coordination and being able to control your body and muscles are important to reading and writing. If your brain is having trouble coordinating your arm, fingers and pen, or working out how to keep our head and body still so it can focus the eye muscles then reading, writing and comprehending are going to be a real complication.

There are lots of exercises and professional help you can get in this area, but giving your child timeout in the fresh air to work on their gross and fine motor skills is free! Here are some to get you started.

1: Get out there and teach them to throw and catch a ball

2: Get some swimming lessons in

3: Spend some time skateboarding or biking or skating.

4: Handball is really good hand-eye-feet coordination game.

5: Good old Kiwi favourite in hot weather…a water fight! Get some sponges and a bucket of water and have them work on hitting a fast moving target provided by you or their siblings.

Don’t forget to Slip Slop Slap though! Enjoy the sun and if you would like more ideas for summer fun to improve your child’s coordination drop me a line at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it