Promoting Visual Skills
Disclosure
Information
on this
website should not
be construed as medical or therapy advice and is provided only as
general information. Please consult your physician and other health
professionals for specific advice.
Activities to Promote
good Visual
Skills
Although
it is in the
realm of an eye specialist to treat
visual disorders- caretakers, teachers and therapists can
encourage activities
that promote good visual skills.
Babies
- Present simple shape
books to
look at.
- Place a moving mobile
to look at
from the crib.
- Place baby on her
belly so
that she looks upward to reach for toys.
- Carry baby around in a
backpack or front carrier facing outward.
- Provide push button toys
that
make things pop up or move.
Toddlers
and Two Year Olds
- Encourage
pointing
to named objects in
the room.
- Pointing to
pictures in a book.
- Tossing objects
into
containers or to
another person.
- Form boards,
shape
sorters, nesting
cups, ring stacks.
- Swatting at
bubbles
or suspended toys
like a light tether ball.
- Scribbling with
crayons.
- Imitating finger
play songs.
- Rolling a
ball
back and forth.
- Lots of movement
activities.
Preschoolers
- Balloon toss
(just
keep it in the air).
- Wind
up bath toys.
- Playing
with Tornado Tubes.
- Looking
at bottle filled with oil, water and food coloring.
- Tossing and
catching a large ball.
- Drawing shapes:
cross, circle, square.
- Puzzles, lacing
boards, stringing beads.
- Simple, large
mazes.
- Matching objects
and pictures.
- Lotto game.
- Drawing a line
between matching shapes.
- Finding Hidden
Pictures.
- Hokey Pokey dance.
- Tether ball.
Kindergarteners
- Tracing over
dotted or
highlighted lines, shapes, letters etc.
- More complex
mazes.
- Cutting out
simple shapes.
- Flashlight tag.
- Place picture
cards on the
wall, child copies sequence.
- Sorting a deck of
cards
into piles of each suit.
- Balloon toss
(make it
travel to a named person).
- Air Hockey, Noc
Hockey, toy
golf games.
- Fly a kite.
- Water volley ball.
- Copy dot designs.
- Copy geoboard,
bead, block,
peg board and Lite Brite designs.
- Point to all the
letter A's
on the page, letter B's etc.
- Hidden Pictures
books.
- Complete
the Picture books.
- What's Wrong with
the
Picture? books.
- Candyland, Bingo
and other
simple board games.
- Pouring liquids
from a
pitcher and watering the house plants.
- Circling which
two pictures
are the same.
- Crossing out
pictures that are different.
- Playing Go Fish
and
other simple card games.
- Lots of puzzles.
- Drawing huge
diagonal.
crosses and infinity signs on the chalk
board.
- Forming shapes
and letters
in the air with fingers, then toes.
- Playing a
commercial "Memory" game or card game
"Concentration".
Older
Children
- Circling
all the shapes on a
page that are
the same.
- Writing
letters inside large
graph
paper squares.
- Arranging
alphabet blocks
alphabetically.
- Coding/decoding
games.
- Lots
of card games (Spit,
Solitaire, Slamwiche, Rummy, poker).
- Dribbling
the smallest size
ball possible.
- Juggling
two bean bags, three if
able.
- More
complex puzzles and
mazes.
- Ball
sports/target games
(baseball, basketball, tennis, squash, soccer).
- Hitting
a small suspended ball
with
a stick held horizontally between both hands.
- Ping
pong, Foosball, Pin ball.
- Word
searches
- Connect
Four.
- Yard
games: Hit the penny, Red
Light Green Light, Four Square, Spud.
- Volleyball.
- Dances
with swinging (ballroom,
square dance, folk, contra).
- Forward
Pass or Zoomball (ball
zooms on ropes toward face).
- Parachute
games.
- Simon
(by Milton Bradley)
requires remembering color and sound patterns.
|
|
|
There
are many skills involved in
using the eyes for vision:
- A
child must be able to fixate
on a visual target such as
a rattle
as she reaches
out to grab it.
- A child must be
able to keep the eyes on a moving target
to visually track
it as she tries to shoot the moving duck
in
the carnival.
- A child must use saccadic eye movements to
move
from
one word to another in order to read.
- A
child must be able to use both eyes together in order to
see
three
dimensional objects with binocular
vision.
- A child must be
able to localize a moving
target amongst
many
such as when swatting at a bubble or finding mommy
as
she walks in a crowd.
- A child must be
able to converge the eyes
on a target
such
as a ball as it moves toward the nose.
- A child must have
good visual perceptual skills
to understand
what
she is seeing in order to read, write, draw, do puzzles
and
connect dots.
- A child must be
able to visually discriminate differences
in
size,
shape, directionality and color, especially in a busy
background.
- A child must have
good visual memory to put
all of these
skills
to use after learning something new.
- A child must
demonstrate good eye-hand
coordination to
perform
tasks such
as threading a needle that require
much control.
 A child of
course
must also have good eyesight
(acuity) which is evaluated by reading the
letters
on the Snellen chart in the doctor's
office. Some optometrists only address acuity
or
the ability to focus, others look
at functional
vision and how it impacts
school work and
daily living skills.
There are
many
other
visual problems and diseases such
as
cataracts, glaucoma and macular
degeneration that
mainly affect
older persons and will not be addressed
on this page. These
ailments require a visit to an
ophthalmologist, a medical doctor who
specializes
in eye diseases. Please
visit Low Vision
for
more information.
Common
Visual Problems
seen in Children
A
child will
probably have
difficulty with binocular vision
when
one or both of the eyes turns inword or outword. The
eye
muscles may not be working properly and one eye may be
stronger than the other other causing the stronger eye to do
all the
work. This is often seen in individuals with muscular
disorders such as
cerebral palsy and genetic abnormalities
such as Downs syndrome. This condition may be quite
obvious
and parents usually will bring
their child to receive vision care
at a young age. Many children are helped by vision therapy
that may involve special
lenses, prisms, computer programs
and other techniques. Some
doctors
recommend eye exercises
or patching.
 However,
sometimes visual
problems are less
obvious unless the child is bumping into things
or overreaching. Children may avoid fine motor
activities which are difficult and their visual
problems may not
be identified until they are
required to read and do paper and pencil work.
Sometimes when the eyes don't work well together a child
slants
his head to the side so that only one eye is viewing the
paper. Another clue that something is wrong is when a child
skips words or lines while reading either silently or out loud.
Visual problems should be ruled out when children are having
difficulties learning how to read. This requires more than just
reading an eye chart.
Children are typically able to visually track a slowly moving
object with isolated eye movements by the age of three
years. This means that the child only moves her eyes and
not her head. This requires good abilities to stabilize the
head and fixate. Some children with sensory integration
or visual perceptual problems find this very difficult to do
and they move their whole bodies rather than just the head
or eyes when shifting gaze. These children may also shift
their bodies or rotate paper when changing directions on
a maze rather than controlling the pencil to change directions.
This is another red flag to look at visual and perceptual
problems that impact learning.
Another visual problem often identified in school is difficulty
shifting eye fixation from the white board to paper and back
again or shifting gaze from one part of the paper to another.
Such a child may easily lose her place while reading. Using
a ruler under the reading line may help the child to keep her
place.
For
Everybody
View
Finders and Movies
|
|
