Bilateral Integration/Coordination

My son's tub of legos- great for bilateral coordination

Today we are continuing to build on our “Secrets” to Good Handwriting entry.  Remember that developing certain skills will also positively affect your child's fine motor skills. These other skills are the “building blocks” of fine motor skills.  Last time we addressed postural and shoulder stability; today we will look at bilateral coordination/integration.

The term “bilateral” means coordination between the right and left sides of the body. Even more, it involves movement of the body does across its midline.  When we think of fine motor skills, we often just think of bilateral integration as using the two hands together.  Without going into too much detail, it goes beyond just using 2 hands together.  A child who has difficulty with bilateral integration skills can also have difficulty with balance, with using their 2 eyes together efficiently as well as coordinated use of both hands together.  It could also affect their language skills.  That being said, the following are some activity ideas for bilateral integration:

-Playing catch, using a racket/bat during play (tennis, t ball, etc)

-Opening packages of food/baggies of food.

-Manipulative toys that require use of 2 hands- pop beads, duplos/legos, stringing beads, lacing cards.  Any type of toy that requires pieces to be pushed together or pulled apart, or any toy that you have to use 2 hands together to play with or manipulate.

-Dressing dolls, Barbies, have your child dress themselves

-Some chores help with using 2 hands together, such as emptying the trash cans, clearing the dinner table (carrying plates using 2 hands together), carrying a basketful of laundry, carrying containers of toys and putting them away when cleaning up.

-Art activities:  Coloring (stabilizing the paper with one hand while coloring/drawing with the other), Cutting (holding the paper in one hand while using the scissors with the other)

-drumming, rhythm sticks, etc

-climb a rope at the playground, have your child pull his/herself along a rope with hand over hand motion (sit on a scooter board and pull themselves along)

-Play with playdough: use a rolling pin to roll out the playdough, use 2 hands together to roll pieces into a ball or to roll the playdough out into a snake, use a safe knife or a scissors to cut pieces of playdough, flatten the playdough using 2 hands together.

-Tap into the vestibular system to improve bilateral coordination (the vestibular sense is found in the inner ear and helps the brain to process movement information). Children with poor vestibular processing may well have delayed bilateral integration abilities.  For this reason, it can be helpful to use movement activities to boost bilateral coordination skills.  Any activity that involves movement of the head in space is a vestibular based activity.  Try using a “moving” activity such as: jumping on a trampoline, rolling on the grass, going down a slide, swinging and doing somersaults.