Vol. XIX, Issue 1 Supplement / 2018 G Y M N A S I U M Scientific Journal of Education, Sports, and Health 5 Original Article Ludotherapy Through Basketball - a Means of Kinetic Stimulation for Children with Intellectual Disabilities Leonte Nicoleta 1 * Popescu Ofelia 2 1,2 Polytechnic University of Bucharest, no. 313 Splaiul Independenței, Romania DOI: 10.29081/gsjesh.2018.19.1s.01 Keywords: ludotherapy, basketball, intellectual disabilities. Abstract Motor education through basketball contributes to the development of manual coordination, balance and laterality, organization in space and time, the latter focusing on the body scheme that children are primarily concerned with at primary school. Practicing, by using the simple means of basketball, improves the primordial sensory skills; sophisticated and global motor activities improve the basic motor skills and facilitate the perceptual-motor integration, which is the starting point for the cognitive functions. This paper aims at designing and implementing a kinetic program of stimulation using simple means of basketball in order to improve the balance and laterality of children with intellectual disabilities. The results obtained revealed the efficientization of the fundamental motor skills (locomotion, handling and stability) of the research subjects. 1. Introduction Ludotherapy by the means of basketball acts on the child with the aim of "shaping and orienting, towards a certain ideal, his intellectual and physical capacities, thus ensuring his fulfillment and the multilateral perfection of his personality” (Demeter, 1980, p. 156). As a means of motor education, game therapy educates motricity, giving the child the gesture, while at the same time it improves the physical and mental balance, and multiplies effective relationships with things and with other people (Mitrache & Bejan, 2011). American researches (Gallahue 1993, p.78; Housner 2000, p.241), the promoters of education for development, place as the central objective of motor education, both learning movements and learning by movement, through the game. * E-mail: nicoleta_leonte@yahoo.com, 0721.879 416