12 Sports to Play at Home
Sport is a great way to get exercise and is known to boost confidence, improve self-esteem, improve strength and build stamina whilst also having fun!
Sport can be particularly helpful for Autistic Children as movement and physical input, uses their large muscles and engages their vestibular and proprioceptive sensory systems.
Sport also offers a great way to our help our child with impulse control, turn-taking and working with others in a team.
As sport won’t come naturally or be within the comfort zone of all children, it’s important to make accommodations where possible so the activity feels safe.
Rules are important to many of our children, so it’s important to explain them carefully, perhaps with visual reinforcement if they struggle with auditory processing.
Below, we share some ideas for sports we can play at home. To give a clear end point to an activity, add some extra structure to the games, such as playing to a certain number of points or a fixed time. A visual timer and/or a scoreboard (whiteboard/piece of paper!) can be helpful here.
Here are some great indoor sports and activity ideas to try at home with your child.
Set up a volleyball court with a piece of string between two walls, or between two chairs. You’ll also need a balloon or softish ball.
The aim of the game is to make the balloon/ball touch the floor on your opponent’s side of the string.
If your child has less accurate arm function a corridor is a good place to set up your court as the walls keep the balloon in reach.
To make your ‘net’, set up a laundry basket or draw a circle on a piece of paper and stick it to the wall or the floor.
Try to score a goal from different places – getting further away with each successful shot.
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Set up ten bowling pins in a triangle shape – use toilet roll tubes or empty plastic bottles if you don’t have skittles. Try to knock over all the skittles. See how many tries it takes to knock them down.
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Get further away from the skittles as your child improves.
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Try this with your child in some different positions – on their hands and knees or up high on their knees to work their muscles further.
Boccia is a fabulous and fully inclusive sport similar to Bowls. See this Our Home video which explains how to play the game.
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In this version of hockey, you dribble a balloon (the ‘puck’) using your hands (the ‘stick’).
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For a single child game, you could set up an obstacle course with chairs and a goal at the end.
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For a more dexterous child, keeping the balloon in the air while they crawl around the house will keep them entertained and use up lots of energy.
Bristol Bears Community Foundation have created this fantastic video series for those with more profound learning needs. They use very simple language and makaton, give plenty of time for processing information and have a lovely variety of activities to try or engage with.
Here we have an example of their first exercise session:
Over lockdown, they ran a weekly series with different themes each day. You can see all their videos on YouTube.
This great series by the Lawn Tennis Association provides simple ideas to practice your tennis skills in your back garden or in a room with a few meters of space.
If you don’t have a tennis racket you can still try these games with a fly swatter, any other kind of bat, a roll of wrapping paper or a broom. You could use socks, a balloon or scrunched up paper instead of a ball.
The activities vary in difficulty but most can be played from the wheelchair or kneeling.
Table cricket is played by people with all disabilities. It is a great game to play with all the family and can be played using a regular table.
This video Keeping fit and healthy at home: Table top tennis gives a quick demonstration of how to set up and play table cricket in the home.
Visit this video by the Lords Taverners Lord’s Taverners | Rules of Table Cricket for more detailed explanations of how to play this great inclusive game.
In this video, Mickey Quinn gives some lovely and very challenging ideas of what to do with a ball to improve your ball handling skills at home.
Make an obstacle course at home for your child to dribble a football around.
Depending on their skills, they could move the ball around objects or furniture or even try to shoot between two chairs as goals.
This #TogetherActivite mini series from Saracens Sport Foundation provides some fun activities to do at home which are loosely rugby focused. You don’t need a rugby ball and most of their activities use things you can find around the house. Some are indoor, some are outdoor.
The first video is here: https://youtu.be/ekKb_rGzeNw
The remaining videos can be found here.
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Use empty tissue boxes on your child’s feet to slide around the floor. Challenge them to spin or slide on one leg.
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You could try using more tissue boxes on their hands to pretend to be an ice-skating bear!
