Read what a moose with rings can mean for your child's development. It seems simple, but you can learn so much with this moose. The moose with its colorful accents is not only attractive to children, but this moose can also be used for many developmental problems. Learning and playing at the same time, how nice is that!

Hand motor skills – Eye hand coordination

Children with motor problems may have difficulty with different grips. This way you can have the rings grasped in a certain grip that stimulates your child's manual dexterity.

To make it even better, you can link a game to this. For example, combine this with the dice with insert sleeve from toys24hands. You can put all kinds of assignments in the insert sleeves, such as the colors, numbers, a math assignment, a nice do assignment, etc. Let the child throw the dice and then perform the hand motor skills assignment with the rings. This way you make the game more challenging for older children and brain exercises become more fun.

Recognizing, naming and sorting colors

The 4 colours, green, red, orange and blue can be practiced with this. You can let your child name the colours themselves or you can say a colour after which the child has to place it around the elk. For this you can also use the dice from above. Each colour should be placed around one horn. In addition, you can also have the rings sorted based on texture. The latter involves the sense of 'feeling', for many children feeling different textures can have a calming effect.

Cognitive functions

Cognitive functions with such an easy game? Yes, you read that right. With the game you can practice different cognitive functions in a playful way. Below some extra explanation.

1. Rebuilding examples

Take pictures of different constructions where the rings are in different places and in different order. Let the child copy these.

1. Working memory

Give your child an instruction this can be one or more instructions. For example take 1 red ring of the moose. For example take a red ring of the moose and place an orange ring around the moose. You can make the instructions as difficult and long as possible depending on the level of your child.

• Visual imagination

This means being able to hold an image for a certain amount of time. For example, show a picture of how the rings should be placed. Show the picture for a certain amount of time. Take the picture away and let your child build the construction.

• Spatial concepts

The elk can also be used to practice spatial concepts. Spatial concepts such as next to, left, right, first, second, on, under, between. For example, place a green ring on the far left. Place a red ring next to the green ring. Place a blue ring first on the right and an orange ring second. You can choose which spatial concepts you take, depending on which one you want to practice.

• Numbers

You can practice both numbers and operations with the rings. When practicing numbers you can say a number that has to be placed around the elk. When practicing operations your child has concrete material to solve the exercise, namely the use of the rings for example 5 +2.

• Plans

Thinking of a plan to achieve a goal. This means thinking of a plan to build a construction. Your child needs to have a lot of skills for this. Think of taking the right material, arranging the material correctly, carrying out the assignment, checking the result.

• Response inhibition

Here your child must learn to wait his turn. Play together one of the games that you can perform with the elk. Work with turns, where your child must always wait his turn when it is the other player's turn.

Promoting play and communication

Children with or without autism can have little or no play and/or communication. By using different play methods you can provoke both more play and communication. You can also use the elk for this.

You can do this by following the Impact Training at ErgoTina. This is an intensive parent-child training in which parents are taught how to elicit more social and communicative behavior in their child(ren). It is an intensive program that can achieve many results in children with autism. You can find more information at www.ergotina.be

The rings and clay – power

Strength, now you might think, why do I need to practice strength? Children with reduced muscle strength can experience difficulties in performing various daily skills due to reduced strength. Children with writing problems also regularly experience difficulties in finding the correct pen pressure, pressing too softly or too hard.

Using clay, children can experience different pressure strengths, after which they can apply these in everyday situations. Let your child press a ring into clay with different pressure strengths. If necessary, let your child hold the ring in a certain grip.

Lateralization

Lateralization involves crossing the midline, both hemispheres of the brain work together for this. Children experience step by step that there are two sides. Whereby they also get a preferred hand. This develops between 2 and 7 years.

Practicing lateralization with the elk. Placing rings from the sideline to the midline. Completing the row in two directions, both from left to right and vice versa. Placing a ring on the left side with the right hand and vice versa. If your child is a bit older, you can make this exercise more difficult by combining it with a counting exercise, dice with colors or having them throw a number.

To involve gross motor skills, you can do exercises while standing. Make a line on the ground with a rope, place the rings on both the left and right sides of the rope and let your child cross the midline alternately with the left and right. So take a ring on the left side with your right hand and vice versa.

Body awareness

Having body awareness in yourself and in others is necessary for many skills. Think of drawing and writing. Writing involves many physical movements. In order to have a beautiful handwriting, body awareness is therefore extremely important, I will explain it further.

It includes knowledge of one's own body, awareness of one's own body, knowing one's own body in relation to others and one's own body in space. These skills ultimately lead to proprioception (body awareness). Feeling one's own body without visual control. What many do not know is that writing involves the entire body and not just the fingers and hand. Also the sitting position, entire torso, shoulders, elbow and wrist. Proprioception is therefore of great importance to make the entire writing process run more smoothly.

You can stick velcro on the moose and on the rings. Your child draws a card or you verbally say a body part after which your child has to stick a ring on the correct body part. You can also apply this to your own body, let the child first point to the correct body part, after which he can place a ring on the moose.

To practice your own body in relation to space, you can have them perform exercises in space, after which your child can slide a ring over the elk. For example, crawl through space on your knees, make a 'snow angel', crawl like a snake on the ground.

More information?

As you can read above, you can use the elk for many skills.

Would you like more information or is your child experiencing difficulties in school or daily life?