Plopper or Shooter educational? Yes, definitely!
Author: Angela Rozema
Occupational therapist
Yes… it’s fun! And kids always find it fantastic right away. But did you know it’s also very useful and educational?
That's why I like to write this blog.
What is the shooter anyway?
It is a silicone animal that shoots away the balls you put in its mouth when you squeeze its body.It makes a nice popping sound.
Certainly not too hard.
But what is there to learn from this?
Hand motor skills and midline
To shoot the balls you need quite a bit of strength. So you train the hand muscles anyway.
We can do it with one hand. But small children's hands certainly cannot.
And that's interesting! Because then we have to use two hands. And that's a good movement for the young child to practice. You then automatically hold the plopper in front of your belly and push the animal with both hands at the same time.
This synchronous movement is difficult for many children and important to practice around 4/5 years old.
You do this movement on the midline of your body. This is also motorically good.
Do you want to make it more difficult and practice the fine tuning of this motor movement? Then you can practice it left and right of the midline. And that brings me to my second functional play tip:
.
1. Eye-hand coordination
And if you can squeeze the animal in a measured way, the ball shoots away. But where to? So then you can also aim at a target. This can be far away or closer. This way you immediately practice the coordination of eye movements and hand movements. So targeted and measured movement. And above all with a lot of fun!
2. Cognitive
And finally, you can of course also be cognitively occupied with it. How much fun is it to discover together with the plopper how it is actually possible that the ball sometimes shoots away softly and sometimes hard. What is air pressure? And how can I influence that?
And what a path the balls make. For whiz kids this application will also be very nice!
Conclusion
So in short, the plopper is suitable for young children to develop hand motor skills, eye-hand coordination and curiosity.
