Visual motor activities for older students

Kids with learning and behavioral disorders often struggle with visual motor skills or poor hand-eye coordination. As young children develop, they learn new skills and gain muscle and motor coordination that builds on previous skills. Children with learning and behavioral disorders may have missed significant developmental milestones, which can be a contributing factor in their daily struggles. Identifying and improving visual motor skills that are lagging behind will lay the foundation for proper brain function and development as your child grows. For young children, age-appropriate visual motor skills allow them to successfully play sports, complete different types of puzzles, cut and fold paper, color in the lines, and write legibly, all of which help kids gain confidence in the classroom. For active and outdoorsy kids who may tire of drawing, cutting, and coloring, consider some of the following fun activities that promote the development of visual motor skills:

Activities that Encourage Visual Motor Skills

Jumping games - Have your child jump rope, do jumping jacks, or jump on a trampoline while you hold up picture or word cards. Hold up a new card with each jump. Make a game of it by challenging your child to see how quickly he or she can identify what's on the card while up in the air. If your child masters this activity easily, try cards with simple addition and subtraction problems. See if your child can solve the math problems while jumping!

Origami - Strengthening hands through activities like cutting and stringing beads can be repetitive, so consider origami as an alternative that most kids find enjoyable. Intricately folding paper can improve hand and wrist strength with the added bonus of a cute animal or other fun figure to be proud of once the activity is complete. There are origami kits for all ages and ability levels, and this activity can be fun for you and your child to do together.

Flashlight Tag - Turn down the lights and play flashlight tag with your child! Shine a flashlight at the wall in a random pattern. Move up and down, side to side, and in loops. Have your child follow your movements with his or her flashlight. This activity encourages eye tracking skills in addition to visual motor practice.

New ways to play catch - Kids who struggle with hand-eye coordination may be reluctant to play catch with a heavy, small baseball. Instead, offer to play catch with your child using a variety of balls that are differing sizes and weights. Try beach balls, kick balls, bouncy balls, wiffle balls, and more! You can even toss a bean bag or stuffed animal back and forth. Not only will your child's hand eye coordination improve, but so will his or her ability to discern how much pressure and effort is needed to toss and catch different objects.

Swing toss - Ad an extra element to your child's backyard swinging with a fun game of swing toss. While your child is swinging, stand a safe distance in front of him or her, and hold a hula hoop. Have your child toss a bean bag or ball through the hoop while swinging. This activity encourages balance, sensory integration, core strength, and problem solving in addition to improving visual motor skills.

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VISUAL MOTOR integration is a complex skill set which encompasses many underlying skills such as visual perception, motor control, and eye-hand coordination. Simply stated, it refers to the ability to translate a visual image, or a visual plan, into an accurate motor action. Visual motor skill development begins at birth and continues to be refined throughout life by practice and exposure to developmentally appropriate activities. Building with blocks, scribbling, tracing, writing, drawing, cutting and catching a ball are all examples of visual motor activities that a child engages in.
I recommend at least 15 to 30 fun minutes of visual motor activities daily to improve eye-hand coordination and build important prewriting foundations in children ages 2 to 6 years.

• Allow the child time to explore and just indulge in scribbling. Gradually introduce these activities to begin shaping their strokes.
• Attach a large piece of drawing paper to the wall or refrigerator. Make a long vertical line. Have the child trace over your line using preschool crayons or markers and going from the top to the bottom 10 times. Then have the child draw the line next to yours, 10 times.
• Practice drawing horizontal lines from the left to the right in a similar way. Also practice drawing circles, starting at the top of the paper.
• Practice these prewriting strokes in a variety of media such as writing with a finger in a tray of wet sand, shaving cream, finger-paint, playdoh or salt. They can also be done using driveway chalk on paved surfaces. Gluing on beads or dry pasta on the lines/circle also reinforces the concept.
• Be creative, draw different scenes and have the child draw vertical, horizontal and circular lines to “drive the car into the garage” or “take the dog for a walk” or “push the shopping cart in the store”. You can create a narrow path outlined with colored glue and have the child trace between the “bumpy lines”.
• Between the ages of 3½ and 4 years introduce shapes such as a square and the uppercase letters of the child’s name. Be sure to use a variety of tactile media and tracing to teach formations instead of using paper and pencils.
• Trace around stencils of different shapes and figures. The non-dominant hand should hold the stencil flat and stable against the paper, while the dominant hand pushes the crayon firmly against the edge of the stencil.
• Have the child draw the letter or shape on your back and you guess it, with your eyes closed. Switch and allow the child to guess. This builds kinesthetic recognition of the letter shape. You can also play the same game with using an index finger to write invisible letters and shapes in the air.
• Using commercially available waxed strings known as “Wikki Stix”, have the child “build” letters and shapes, At first, the child can position these flexible strings over the lines of the letter or shape drawn by you. Then as they learn the formation, they can try to build their own letter or shape without using a “template”.
• Letters and shapes can also be built by rolling out pieces of playdoh or modeling clay, using popsicle sticks, and pipe cleaners.
• Once the child is in kindergarten, use all the tactile media described above to teach upper and lower case letter formations and numbers. “Learning Without Tears” (Formerly known as Handwriting Without Tears) is a multisensory handwriting curriculum used in the Shrewsbury Public Schools. More information about it is available on http://www.lwtears.com

This refers to the ability of the eyes to work together to follow and hold an object in the line of vision as needed. The following activities will help in developing visual tracking and scanning skills as well as facilitate eye-hand coordination.

• Flashlight tag:Lie on your back with your child. Shine your flashlight on the ceiling, moving it horizontally, vertically, diagonally and in circular patterns. Have your child “chase” your light beam with his own flashlight.
• Balloon toss: Toss a medium sized balloon in the air. Take turns with your child to bat it with either a baseball bat or hands, trying to prevent the balloon from hitting the ground.
• Pop bubbles: Take turns to blow bubbles from a bubble wand into the air. Have the child try to pop the bubbles with his hand, keeping score of the number of bubbles successfully popped.
• I spy: Find hidden pictures in “Where is Waldo” or “I Spy” books. You can also play “I spy” games in any environment (dinner table, in the car, in the supermarket) by having your child find an object you call out, within an allotted amount of time. This will encourage visual scanning.
• Beanbag toss: Throw beanbags or koosh balls into a hula-hoop placed flat on the floor. Gradually increase the distance. To make it more challenging, place an empty soda bottle in the center of the hoop and try to knock it down.
• Throw and catch: Start with a large playground sized ball (8-inches diameter) at a distance of 3 feet. Gradually increase the distance between you and your child, and then move on to using a smaller ball.
• Mazes: For the preschool-aged child, use commercially available simple maze books that encourage tracing between vertical and horizontal lines. As the child gets ready to enter kindergarten, increase the challenge by giving him mazes with more complex shapes.
• Building blocks: Construction toys that have simple block patterns on a card that the child can copy encourage motor planning and eye-hand coordination as well as develop spatial skills. For younger children, you build the model first and then they can copy your model. For older children, have them copy the design from a card, teaching them how to do it step-by-step.
• Parquetry blocks/interlocking jigsaw puzzles: These are commercially available and encourage spatial planning and eye-hand coordination. For younger children begin with simple, wooden inset puzzles where the child has to match the piece to the shape on the board. Interlocking puzzles can be introduced around the age of 3 1/2 to 4 years, gradually increasing the number of pieces.
• Website link: This website provides a list of fun eye exercises designed to improve visual processing and explains the critical link between visual skills and school performance. These eye exercises are not meant to replace vision therapy, which is a medical treatment prescribed by developmental optometrists. http://www.eyecanlearn.com

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