The importance of body awareness.

Body awareness is the ability to know where body parts are in relation to others and the world. It is important to have body awareness because it is important for direction following, social skills, safety, school readiness skills, and traveling.

To improve body awareness it is important to have the individual look in a mirror, so they can recognize their image. Playing Simon Says is a great example of a fun body part identification game (Simon says touch your nose, arm, feet, back, hips, raise your arms, stand on one foot, turn around, hop etc.).

Some examples of body awareness skill building songs are:
1. Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
2. If you are happy and You Know It (clap your hands, stomp feet, and silly lines can be added like hop, snap, give high five, do the twist, make a fish face
3. The Hokey Pokey are (there are big and small body parts that can be used, some can be silly like put your eye in, put your eye out, put eye in and blink in up and down)
4. London Bridge is Falling Down (this one is good for social cues, personal space, and body awareness)
5. Also, using musical instruments can be a very good way to teach body awareness. Using a tambourine, maraca, or rhythm sticks the individual can copy or follow direction like make noise behind you, up, down, the side and other side.

The following are three important senses in involved in body awareness and some ideas on how to provide input to each of them.

Proprioceptive (the body's ability to sense the location of a body part in space with eyes closed.)- with deep pressure, lotion massages, vibration massages, and joint compressions.

Vestibular (is a system that detects balance and directional movements of body input)- jumping on a trampoline, swinging, rocking in a rocking chair, rolling on a therapy ball

Tactile (the light and deep touch receptors in the skin that allow us to feel if there is a bug crawling, or if an item is hot)- putting hands in rice, playing with shaving or whipped cream, making goop, mixing dough, making cookies, playing in sand, lotion massage.

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