Obstacle course

Description

Obstacle courses can be adapted to meet all ages and stages of development

  • Set up courses which encourage children to climb over objects, crawl through tunnels or slither under equipment and move around obstacles in different ways, eg, run in and out of cones, jump between beanbags, skip to a fixed point.
  • Soft play equipment can be great for encouraging rolling, sliding and crawling.
  • Children can make up their own courses and challenge others to have a go.
  • Set up simple courses using markers or cones that encourage children to weave in and out of obstacles. Try challenging them to travel in and out of the markers in a variety of ways, eg, skipping, jumping, hopping.

Related Skills

Crawling under, around and through objects and obstacles showing a growing appreciation of their own size in relation to the space of the environment.

Run on the whole foot, avoiding obstacles. This progresses to running on the toes

Run and stop and start easily

A mature cross lateral running pattern should be present – arms and legs on opposite sides are working together

Moving own body through the environment showing an appreciation of own size and position. Able to turn, stop and start.

Early movers is a collaborative project between Loughborough University, the NCSEM and Loughborough campus nursery. Our work has been supported with Loughborough University Enterprise Funding through the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF).