10 ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN WITH DOWN SYNDROME - ECONOMÍA - 2024

Here is a list of activities for children with Down syndrome that can help you improve the skills of these children. Do you have a student or child with Down syndrome and you want to develop their skills? There are many exercises that you can benefit from that will help you develop skills you need for your day-to-day life.

It is not only recommended that they carry out activities of those skills that they have fully acquired, but also of others in which they present problems in order to improve them to reach their individual potential.

Activities to improve attention

Having good care is essential to achieve complete autonomy in the future and to be able to carry out the activities you want without the help of another person. This can be very important for anyone, but it is decisive for those who have a disability.

Here are two exercises that can help you promote attention in children with Down syndrome:

1. Tell me a story

Procedure: One of the activities that you can do if you want to improve children's attention is to tell them a story and then ask them questions about their protagonists and what has happened.

To do this, you have to choose a story that they like and that makes them curious. Normally, fables tend to be more fun and can also learn from their morals.

Once the teacher has finished telling the story or fable. You have to ask the children questions to confirm that they have heard and understood the story. For this reason, questions such as: Who is the protagonist? What is his name? What has happened to him? they will help us to know the degree of understanding.

Material: Tales and fables. Here you can find a list of fables.

Tips: While the teacher is telling the story, he has to assume the roles of the characters and change the voice, in order to make the activity more entertaining and arouse curiosity in the children. Depending on the academic and understanding level that the children have, relevant questions will also be inserted.

2. We are musicians!

Procedure: Music can help children with Down syndrome develop and improve their attention. One of the funniest ways to work it is by listening to songs. The children, while listening to it, have to do different exercises, such as: clapping to the rhythm, jumping, moving their hands up, etc.

The ideal is to put different styles of music where the rhythms are different to be interspersed. This type of exercise can also be performed with percussion instruments such as the triangle or the drum. The idea would be the same, that they play them to the rhythm of the music.

The distribution that I have always used to carry out this activity is that the children are placed in a circle, since this way they can move and follow the rhythm of the music more comfortably. If any of them fail, they will be eliminated and help their companions to carry out the activity.

Material: Musical instruments, in case you prefer to carry out the activity in this way.

Tips: To make the activity more dynamic, it is advisable to intersperse the different types of songs, starting with those that have a slow rhythm and ending with those that are more moved. In this way, the level of difficulty will increase.

Activities to improve gross and fine motor skills

Children with Down syndrome need to perform fine and gross motor skills to strengthen the muscles of the fingers and hands and thus be able to perform all kinds of movements with them to increase their autonomy. Here are several exercises that you can use:

3. What is its shape?

Procedure: this activity is usually very simple and helps children to take the materials properly and have to force themselves with it, just what we are looking for. With an awl, they have to dot the outline of different drawing cards that we have previously prepared, no matter what type of drawings they are. I usually use the typical ones that come in the coloring books.

The idea is that they have to follow the contour line of the drawing without leaving and point it as you tell them (leaving more or less distance between point and point). Once everyone has dotted the outline, they have to tell us the shape of the objects that appear or even if they are animals or people wearing clothes.

Materials: To carry out this activity, it will be necessary to use punches, cork and the drawings that they have to dot.

Distribution: It is recommended that in order to have the class controlled in this activity, you place the children on a large table so that you can supervise their movements.

Tips: If it is the first time that they take an awl, we will have to explain to them how it should be grasped and used so that they do not hurt themselves with the tip. On the other hand, we will also have to show it to you since in most cases explaining how it works is not enough.

At the beginning of the activity, they will run a lot of tapping without having a work order, so it is essential that we show them that they have to go little by little and start somewhere in the drawing.

4. We cut rows to make balls

Procedure: Another of the activities that we can carry out to improve the psychomotor skills of our students is to cut newspaper horizontally following lines that we have previously painted on them.

This will allow them to learn how the scissors are held and what they are used for. In addition, they can also follow the lines that we have previously marked with a marker, improving their attention and coordination.

Once they have cut out all the newspaper, they have to go strip by strip making balls of different sizes. This will allow them to incorporate new movements to their fingers and wrists as well as to develop their fine motor skills correctly.

Later, these paper balls can be used to decorate drawings and thus carry out another activity to work on fine motor skills.

Materials: newspaper, scissors, marker and glue.

Tips: As in the handling of the awl, we have to explain to them the correct use of the scissors so that they do not hurt themselves. The good distribution of space will allow us to control movements at all times.

5. How many objects are in the bag?

Procedure: The children will be divided into several groups. Next, they will be distributed bags with objects of different sizes that they have to take out and place on a table while they are counting them.

The group that finishes before counting and taking out the objects will be the winner, so its members can choose one of those toys or objects to play with at recess.

Materials: The materials needed for this activity can be class objects or toys. The important thing is that they are of different sizes in order to work motor skills.

Tips: To keep an eye on the weather and that there is equal conditions, the teachers should accompany this activity with songs. On the other hand, it would also be advisable to divide the children into mixed groups and with different cognitive levels so that they can help each other during the activity.

6. Pass the ball through the hoop

Procedure: Another of the activities that I usually do to work on gross motor skills is "pass the ball through the hoop". The children have to be placed in two rows and one by one they have to take one of the balls that a priori have been placed on the wall and hit them through its corresponding ring (the balls will have the same color as the ring for the one who has to pass them).

In this way, we are also working on colors in a transversal way and the activity becomes more fun.

Materials: rings and balls of different size and color.

Tips: The teacher has to move the balls and hoops around, making sure that the position they may have does not give clues as to which ball is the pair of each hoop. The only thing through which you can tell is by its color.

Activities to reinforce language

Language is an important skill that people with Down syndrome have to develop properly if they are to develop their autonomy properly. Therefore, carrying out activities that involve the use of language is essential. Next, we show you two activities:

7. We are actors!

Procedure: To work the language, one of the activities that can be carried out are small theaters in which each student has a paper and says small sentences. These little stories have to be from everyday life, to make it easier for them to interpret.

Some examples can be: A small talk with your friend about her boyfriend, the clothes they have bought, etc. It is recommended that you do this activity in pairs, since it costs less to do it this way. However, if your students are able to make interventions in groups, you can also do so.

Materials: To carry out this activity, no materials will be needed, just the script for each child's interpretation.

Tips: The teacher has to be attentive and resolve any doubts that may arise. At first, they may not be able to respect the order of the shift and may even step on the partner's intervention, since on some occasions they can become very impulsive. Therefore, with this activity they will be able to learn to communicate properly.

8. What did we do yesterday?

Procedure: Another of the activities that I usually use when I want to work on the language area is the one that we are going to explain below. From my point of view, it is an activity that they tend to like a lot and that also encourages camaraderie within the class.

The students one by one, have to tell what they did after school the day before in detail. In this way, they have to think about what they have to tell and structure it in an orderly way.

Material: To carry out this activity you will not need any material.

Tips: The teacher has to listen carefully to what his students tell in case at some point, they do not know how to continue or how to express an activity.

Sometimes, it is recommended that simple guidelines be given on how to tell colleagues about the activities they did the day before. This will give them an idea of ​​how they should do it.

Activities to develop autonomy

To develop the autonomy of people with Down syndrome we can play different games with which they can practice the coin among themselves. On the other hand, it would also be convenient if we gave them the opportunity to be responsible for some activities that we usually do both at home and at school.

Here are some activities that can help them develop their autonomy:

9. Let's go to the market

Procedure: In the classroom we can simulate many everyday situations that will allow the child to improve their autonomy and know how to act at all times. One of the exercises that we can carry out for this purpose is to pretend that they are going to buy food at the market.

To do this, we have to divide the children into pairs where one of them will act as a seller and the other as a buyer. Next, they have to act based on what they would do from the moment they walk through the door of the supermarket or the store until they go shopping.

In this way, we can see exactly how they would do it and how they would address the seller and vice versa.

Materials: To carry out this activity you will need some toys, these are going to be what our students are really going to buy. In the case that we simulate the purchase in a greengrocer, it would be recommended that the toys were fruits.

Tips: The teacher should mediate the activity at all times, since at the beginning they will go to the fruit bowl in any way and will not respect the communication guidelines in a real way.

Therefore, previously they will have to explain how they should communicate in an educated way as well as the possible phrases they have to say at all times. For example: when you get to a place you say good morning, if you want to buy something before you have to ask, could you give me a kilo of bananas? Etc.

10. How much is it worth?

The handling of the euro is also very important to develop the autonomy of people with Down syndrome, therefore, we also have to perform exercises of this type.

Procedure: A good way for them to learn the use of euro coins and notes is to present them with real problems of daily life, the more daily they are, the easier it will be for them to internalize the handling. A clear example could be writing on the board a mathematical problem like the following:

Luisa wants to buy pants and a shirt. The pants cost 10 euros and the shirt 6. If you have 20 euros, can you buy them? How much is left over? How much do both things cost in total?

To make this activity easier for them, real-looking money will be provided in the form of bills and coins. This is often very useful as it is difficult for them to imagine the value of the coins.

Materials: euro coins and bills that simulate the real one, paper, pencil and eraser.

Tips: To be able to do this exercise, you need to have a basic understanding of the value of each currency. For this reason, you can intersperse this exercise with short and easy explanations starting with the coins with the lowest value and ending with those with the most, as with the banknotes.

Once you have explained the values, you can help them integrate that new knowledge by doing problems like these and adapting their quantities.