Our Favourite Gross Motor Cerebral Palsy Toys

Gross Motor skills formed the first focus of our cerebral palsy therapy for our daughters affected upper limb as she had very little awareness/function of that arm following her stroke. We (in consultation with her therapist) worked to try and encourage awareness and function through various methods, including of course toys, that were suitable for gross motor activities.

The toys that are suitable for your child will depend on lots of variables, but we generally focused on younger/baby toys initially as our daughter was still young (13 months or so), and they were generally bright and fun to help get her attention and entertain her.

Our Experience

Our daughter’s main issue was/is high tone in her arm, so it (now) affects her ability to open and close her fingers and her fine motor skills, as well as her gross motor skills and awareness initially. The initial goal was quite simply to bring awareness to the affected side, and try and encourage movement of any kind, small or large. Reaching, pushing, pulling towards, outwards movement, upwards movement, knocking things down – ANY kind of movements were encouraged. As she was able to sit we’d place the toys on the affected side and demonstrate the movements and also move her arm manually through those movements. We found that any movement, even if just us moving the limb helped. As always, adjust the activity and do ANYTHING to encourage success.

For Example

If you take The Fisher Price Stack & Explore Blocks for example, we used this for:

  • Lining them up on the floor in a line and placing items under them
  • Lining them up on a slippery surface and encouraging pushing/sliding them
  • Stacking them into a tower with her non-affected limb and then using her affected side to knock down the tower
  • Building the tower using two hands to hold the blocks, with a hand (or fist on her affected side) on each side

So many different progressions and difficulties with one toy that worked with reach, elbow movement, shoulder movement etc. Once you get your head around looking at other ways a toys can be used outside of it’s standard purpose, it opens up a world of opportunity.

There really are alot of Gross Motor toy options, it’s all about identifying what goal you’re working on and either encouraging that use through full support of the limb, or encouraging them to engage that limb by correct placement of the toy.

Feel free to suggest a toy if there’s some you’ve found useful too!