To the beach!

Packed everyone into the car & went off to Kelanang beach today! This would be our 3rd or 4th visit this year. Traffic was good, weather was good - no haze, clear blue skies!

*will upload photos from hubby's handphone when time permits.

Benefits:

(1) Walking on sand gives him good tactile input & requires good balance.

(2) Walking in water gives resistance & challenges his balance even more (he'll happily splash around in ankle deep water, but if it's almost to his knees, he'll want to hold our hand)

(3) Talk about/show him the surroundings e.g. how the mangrove trees were different in terms of their roots, compared to normal trees. Showed him what animals live in a mangrove habitat e.g. crabs, mudskippers, fishes (cognitive, biology lesson)

(5) Catching crabs requires fine motor skills, hand eye co-ordination, faster reflexes. He caught a lot of crabs with his bare hands (with his fingers actually) during the previous visit. This time round, there were much fewer crabs & he wasnt interested. Instead, he was stomping on the crabs! Not to worry, he didnt kill them. They are much faster in burrowing themselves than he was in stomping them. Stomping with one foot requires good balance.

(6) Picking sea shells requires fine motor, hand eye, squat to stand, bending down. Later at home, you can use the shells in various ways: counting, visual discrimination, biology lesson, decoration during sandplay.

(7) Receptive language (speech input) - you can expand his vocabulary e.g. waves, tide coming in, estuary, hermit crab

(8) Expressive language (speech output) - he has the chance to use what he's learnt e.g. he surprised me by describing the clouds as "fluffy clouds", a term that I used only once, several months ago during a trip to the neighbourhood park.

(9) Bringing back sand for sandplay at home! There are areas on that beach where the sand is very fine & white.

(10) Sandplay at the beach itself of course! E.g. build sand castles, scoop & pour activities etc.

(11) Catching fish using a net requires very fast reflexes, balance, gross motor. We forgot to bring a net, so it was papa who caught fish using his bare hands. Papa the hero caught 3! We tried to help but fish escaped instead! : )

(12) Flying a kite requires gross motor skills, balance, visual tracking. We didnt bring the kite cos we knew we wouldn't have time to fly it cos we left much later than normal.

(13) Drawing/writing in the sand - doesnt require a mature tripod grip, so it's good to do this to let his creativity flow, without being hindered by his disability. Also good as a fun alternative to writing with the usual pen, pencil, colour pencil, marker, crayon, chalk etc on paper, whiteboard, blackboard. Fine motor skill still needed.

(14) A lesson in caring for the environment. Unfortunately, there was trash washed up on certain parts of the estuary (apart from the usual plastic, I came across a bottle, hard hat & tyre!). Use this opportunity to teach him that things should be disposed in their proper place or else it gets washed up on the beach etc & dirties the homes of the crabs, fish etc.

Note:
(1) We have to check to make sure the moon cycle isn't at the full moon stage cos the waves comes right up & there's no beach left. He's fearful if the waves are close to him.
(2) Bring insect repellant or at least wear long pants that can be rolled up. I was badly bitten.
(3) There's decent hawker fare at the purpose built "food court" but lots of flies
(4) There's a children's play area with the usual slides, climbing equipment etc.
(5) There's proper toilet but its yucky (very wet, smelly, no soap, sandy/muddy floor - some mums were rinsing their kids in the toilet). Bring your own hand sanitiser & toilet paper.