BUILD YOUR CHILD’S VISUAL SKILLS

Young children have a natural tendency to be curious and learn about the world around them by exploring. As they play, they are not simply entertaining themselves, but are developing critical skills which help them to navigate their world. The careful choice of toys and activities facilitates all areas of their development, including motor skills, language, social skills, critical thinking, problem-solving and visual skills. These are essential for successful performance both inside and outside the classroom and have a ripple effect on the child’s confidence.

BUILDING TOYS

From simple brightly coloured stacking cups for infants, shape sorting toys for toddlers, puzzles for preschoolers, and complex construction activities for older children, building toys develop important visual skills.

When children engage in building activities, they explore shapes, sizes and colours, analysing and comparing them, recognising their similarities and differences and stimulating visualisation as they plan and organise their construction.

Creativity, problem-solving skills, spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination are enhanced. Hand-eye coordination is the ability to use the visual information from the eyes to guide the hands to carry out an activity. Good hand-eye coordination is essential for reading, writing, using scissors, colouring inside the lines, and playing sports.

VISUAL THINKING GAMES

Activities such as puzzles challenge children’s visual discrimination, pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, depth perception and sequencing, developing their ability to develop and strengthen their ability to understand and process visual information.

They learn to categorise, sort and match the puzzle pieces according to visual clues, and to plan and visualise the completed puzzle. As they navigate through complex puzzles or building structures, they develop the ability to think sequentially, consider alternatives, and persevere through challenges.

Visual memory and problem-solving are enhanced by board games such as checkers and chess.

SPATIAL AWARENESS ACTIVITIES

Spatial awareness is the awareness of our surroundings and our position in relation to other people and objects around us. It is the ability to comprehend and mentally manipulate visual representations of things in space, and involves skills including peripheral vision, depth perception, eye focusing and tracking, and hand-eye coordination.

Ball games, puzzles, map-reading, construction toys and manipulating objects in relation to each other all stimulate this skill.

Babies begin to develop spatial awareness soon after birth, reaching for and grabbing nearby objects. Stimulate this skill with mobiles, rattles and soft toys.

BOOKS

Reading together is not only enjoyable for both parents and children but can also have a significant positive impact on developing visual skills. Fabric books for infants with brightly coloured pictures of familiar objects, cardboard books for toddlers with simple stories and illustrations and more complex books for older children with both text and pictures are the foundations towards building reading literacy.

Visual skills that are stimulated and strengthened include visual focusing, eye teaming, discrimination, visual sequencing and memory.

DIGITAL GAMES

We live in a digital age, and digital games and activities have been the subject of negative attitudes from a variety of sources. One of the reasons they have been criticised is that they overstimulate children while not allowing for visual processing and the development of visual skills and critical thinking.

Myopia in children is on the rise, and screens have been found to be at least partly responsible, both for extended screen time and limited outdoor play. If the only thing children play with are games on a screen, it doesn’t allow them to develop important skills.

But digital games are here to stay, and we cannot eliminate them from children’s lives. When balanced with outdoor play and used in moderation, with parents guiding the selection of games, certain digital games have been found to help strengthen visual skills, such as focusing, tracking and discrimination.

Robotic toys are gaining popularity with school-age children. Pairing these with other activities can supplement the development of essential skills.

OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES

Activities such as climbing, jumping, balancing and ball games promote motor skills and coordination and facilitate crucial visual skill development.

The ability to change focus quickly and smoothly for various distances while playing outdoors, to follow a moving ball and catch, kick or throw it, to maintain balance while climbing, requires good depth perception, peripheral vision, eye teaming and tracking, spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination.

As physical and visual skills improve children’s confidence in navigating their world improves, too.

CHOOSE WITH INTENTION

When choosing toys for children, a number of factors need to be taken into consideration. Choose toys according to the age of the child; however, keep in mind that children develop at their own pace and age-appropriate toys may not necessarily align with your child’s chronological age. Often toys that have too many sounds and sights may not require more from the child than a reaction, while simpler toys encourage an active response from the child that promotes learning.

Some toys, such as construction toys, are specifically designed to stimulate different skills and to challenge the child in different ways at various stages of development. Look for toys that offer a variety of visual elements to engage and stimulate different aspects of visual development.

As we all know, toys are expensive, but higher price does not necessarily mean better value or a better learning experience for the child. Toys should be exciting and entertaining and allow the child to be imaginative and creative. Most importantly, toys should be fun!