Like fine motor skills, gross motor skills can benefit from a sensory integration approach. Most of the activities described for balance, body position, and tactile stimulation will also strengthen your child's ability to do gross motor activities like walking and jumping.

Another activity that can strengthen gross motor skills while also targeting sensory integration issues is playing with ride-on toys. Some of the wheeled wonders you may see in the therapist's playroom are these:

• Large and sturdy tricycles

• Tricycles with a handle on the back so that the therapist can push a child who is not strong enough to pedal

• A low plastic seat with wheels that your child moves by scuffling his feet along the floor in front of him and steers with handles attached to the seat

• A wheeled platform that looks like a fat skateboard that your child can sit on and move with his feet, or lie face-down on and move with his hands

The therapist may set up an obstacle course for your child to wheel her way through — requiring turns around traffic cones and sending her through tunnels — or have her pick up a puzzle or game piece at one end of the room and “drive” it to the other to put it in place.

Obstacle courses that your child travels on foot are also a good gross motor and sensory integration challenge, and may involve many of the items described above. If your child comes upon an obstacle she can't handle, the therapist can quickly step in to help or change the challenge.