Unlike Fine Motor Skill Activities which require the small muscles in the hands and fingers, Gross Motor skill activities use the larger, core stabilising muscles. They are just as important as fine motor skills.

In fact, children will often find sitting at a desk practising fine motor skills easier if they have developed their gross motor skills- as their back and shoulder muscles enable them to sit in an upright posture at a desk for periods of time. 

Gross motor skills enable us to stand, go up the stairs, to climb on and off the toilet, to sit at a school desk for a period of time, to carry things, throw things and catch.

They are therefore, incredibly vital.

50 Screen Free Gross Motor Skills and Activities for Home

Indoor Gross Motor Skills and Activities

• Crawling or walking over different pillows or blankets.
• Tall kneel walking across the room to complete a puzzle.
• Practice walking like different animals. 
• Try walking at different speeds – super slow, slow, normal, fast and super fast
• Jog or run in place 
• Jump over a piece of paper
• Jump side to side over a shoe lace on the floor
• Jump up and down from a bottom step
• Rip scrap paper in half and jump from paper to paper.
• Play with cardboard boxes. Makes tunnels. Step in and out of the boxes. Try the Box Balance Game.
• Dance party
• Freeze Dance
• Make your body into the shapes of the letters of the alphabet
• Move Like Me – strike a pose and the other person mimics it
• Create a dance and teach it to someone else
• Indoor fitness – jumping jacks, mountain climbers, squat thrusts, etc.
• Yoga poses
• Jump over paper cups
• Put a small ball on top of a paper cup. Practice only kicking the ball off the cup without knocking the cup over.
• March to parade music.
• Do step ups using a small stool.
• Keep a balloon up in the air.
• Put painter’s tape on the floor or a rope. Walk forwards, sideways, and backwards on the rope.
• Climb stairs. Put stuffed animals at the top of the stairs, climb up to rescue them and walk back down to bring them back to you.
• Play Simon Says