Rebound Therapy is the therapeutic use of the trampoline. It is used to facilitate movement, promote balance and body awareness, help to increase or decrease muscle tone, promote relaxation, promote sensory integration and to improve communication skills.
Students that benefit from it have a range of disabilities, from mild to severe physical disabilities and from mild to profound and multiple learning disabilities, including sensory impairment and autistic spectrum disorder.
These sessions allow pupils to develop:
- Postural awareness in many different positions.
- Relaxation techniques– at the beginning and end of sessions.
- Improving muscle strength and endurance– reaching in the feely bag, pulling out an object of reference, holding it and passing it to an adult.
- Following instructions– e.g. stopping on the word stop in our action song, reaching for the “feely” bag.
- Practicing communication skills- reaching out for the switch, gestures, sounds, eye contact, facial expressions, sounds and one-word answers.
- And participate in sensory activities– re-acting to cause and effect, use of songs, objects of reference and switches.
- Experiencing movement– the bed moving slowly when rocking, bouncing and rumbling.
- And allow a student to experience freedom of movement– free time to express independent movement and intensive interaction.
- A sense of achievement– we model when our pupils have achieved what we have asked of them, using praise to let them know they have achieved.
- Opportunities to improve eye contact– holding our gaze whilst we are singing during songs, looking from an adult to their sensory strips and “choice making” from a flat hand choice of two and them back to the adult.
- Spatial awareness– feeling for the monkeys from our “Five Little Monkeys”, rumbling their feet to the “rumble” song and feeling our feet near their hips to the “rocking” song.
- FUN/Enjoyment– adults use of “intonation” whilst singing, using fun starters and plenaries at the beginning and end of sessions and repetitive structure during the lesson to teach them what “fun” is.
