The Z axis As therapists, we recognize the importance of mid-line crossing to help with primitive reflexes. Reaching lateral outside…

When it comes to vision, there is so much to learn! Here we are covering visual motor skills for kids and the specific activities that empower development through visual motor activities for kids. Start by checking out Visual Motor Integration developmental milestones for age-appropriate skills that children typically master from age 0-5. Visual Motor Skills ... Read more

Visual scanning is the ability to use the eyes to search for letters, numbers, symbols, information, etc. from side to side and top to bottom. Efficient visual scanning is important for many life skills, including reading. Not too long ago, I posted several free visual scanning worksheets, click HERE to access them. Below are 3 more free scanning worksheets that I hope you will find to be helpful! Circle Blue Circle M & S Circle Q & J

The symptoms of ADHD and functional vision problems are similar. Before your child goes on ADHD medication, read this.

I love learning activities for kids that feel like play! This olympic skiing activity for kids kept my little guys busy for hours!

Here is a FREE ultimate visual motor challenge with two difficulty levels. Can you copy the lines and shapes exactly onto the blank grid? The color version is slightly easier than the black and white version. The colors are easier to distinguish differences but you must match each color to the correct line and shape as well. Submit your email to subscribe to the newsletter and to get your FREE Ultimate Visual Motor Challenge (4 page PDF document). You will be redirected to the download page. The post Ultimate Visual Motor Challenge appeared first on Your Therapy Source.

Build preschoolers' visual skills with these fun visual perception activities, which are important for reading and writing.

These visual tracking tips and tools will help kids with skills like reading, writing, and other learning tasks. Visual tracking is a visual mobility skill.

[Source: Your Therapy Source] Here is a free sample page to challenge visual discrimination and visual motor skills fromSummer Visual Perceptual Puzzles. Download it here http://yourtherapysource.com/vpsummerfreebie.html

I kind of love to share tricks for improving handwriting. There are so many “parts” to written work. There’s fine motor dexterity, pencil grasp, strength, endurance, visual perceptual skills, cognitive skills among other parts to handwriting. You can see more about these topics on our Handwriting page. One big way to develop the skills needed ... Read more

This explains visual efficiency, visual processing, and vision problems related to learning, reading, and handwriting.

These occupational therapy interventions are OT activities for kids to help with child development of functional skills.

Sorry, you missed out on the freebie. You can purchase Patterns, Patterns, Patterns here.

This massive resource on visual motor skills includes visual motor activities and a breakdown of all things visual motor integration.

Learning to identify the basic shapes can be a challenge for many young children. Even after being told the names of the shapes many times,...

Ready, Set, Scan digital download includes 12 visual scanning and discrimination activities.  How fast can you scan, find and mark each item? There are 12 challenges in all with different themes including: shapes, animals, fruit, party, travel and babies.  Just print and start the search.  Follow the directions: start a timer, scan for one object at a time, mark each object and stop the timer.  Record your time in the box provided.  Dot markers work great for marking the item.  Use a different color dot marker for each item. Details: 14 page PDF black and white document You will receive a link immediately following payment to download the document. Ready, Set, Scan encourages: visual scanning visual tracking visual discrimination skills visual motor skills Download a FREE Animal worksheet Watch the video to see how it in action.  Use dot markers, crayons,pencils, pens or even pom poms to mark each item. https://www.yourtherapysource.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Ready-Set-Scan.mp4

Find and Circle 5 Differences Outdoor Fun puzzle challenges visual scanning, visual discrimination and visual motor skills.

Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology published research on visual motor deficits in very preterm children. There were 58 very preterm children (average age 7 yr 6 months and average gestational age 29.2 weeks) and 64 age matched full term children in the study. The participants IQ was measured and a diagnosis of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) was given if the child scored below the 15th percentile on the Movement Assessment Battery for Children. The children traced a trail on a touch screen using their index finger to evaluation visual motor performance. In one condition the children traced a predictable path and in the other condition it was an unpredictable or unstructured path. The results indicated the following: 46% of the very preterm children received a diagnosis of DCD compared to 16% of the full term children in the predictable path condition there was no difference in visual motor performance between the very preterm and full term children in the non structured path condition the very preterm children had poorer visual motor performance whether DCD was present or not The researchers concluded that the predictability of a visual motor task plays a crucial role in very preterm children with DCD and without DCD. Reference: Jorrit F De Kievie et al. The crucial role of the predictability of motor response in visuomotor deficits in very preterm children at school age. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. Article first published online: 17 MAR 2013 DOI: 10.1111/dmcn.12125

For more information on vision, read my other post on the topic, It's a Vision Thing. Most, if not all, of the children who come for occupational therapy have an undiagnosed visual problem. This is because the low muscle tone in the neck and trunk of children with sensory processing issues does not give the eyes a stable base of support from which to operate. As a result, the fine motor coordination in the eye muscles is compromised, which in turn affects the brain's ability to process and interpret visual information correctly. This makes tasks like reading and writing, copying from the blackboard, navigating the playground, and participating in team sports an extra challenge. Because the child has to work extra hard to coordinate the muscular activity of his eyes, his mental and physical energy for the actual task he is using them for is less. His endurance and performance are going to suffer as a result. Since the strength and coordination in the eyes is so dependent on the strength and stability of the spine and neck, the child should be given ample opportunity to play outside, and provided with gross motor activities regularly. This can be a team sport or martial arts class, swimming, tennis, volleyball, bike riding, dance, or anything that the child enjoys and will participate in willingly and happily. Take the child outside and play catch, shoot some hoops, shag some flies, have him practice running and kicking a soccer ball. Do sit ups and push ups together, and have the child wheelbarrow walk. Read to your child every day, and have him sit with you and look at the book while you read. If your child is continually resistant to close work, has a poor attention span for reading or tabletop activities, rubs his eyes, loses his place while he's reading, doesn't copy well from the board, misses part of the page when using a workbook, or complains of headaches or double vision, he is undoubtedly struggling with weak eye muscles. If your child is working with an OT in a sensory gym, give it a year. If his vision doesn't improve after a year of working on suspended equipment, it's time to see a neurobehavioral optometrist, who can prescribe vision therapy if it is warranted. Meanwhile, here are some things to do at home. To improve convergence and the ability to do close work: 1. Give the child a drinking straw in one hand and a strand of uncooked spaghetti in the other. Tell the child to look straight ahead as he brings his hands up in front of his face and slowly slides the spaghetti into the straw. Repeat ten times. Do this once or twice a day. 2. Provide the child with whistles and bubble toys that have moving parts when blown. They encourage the child to pull the eyes in together to watch. {If you can even find breath powered bubble toys anymore. Except for old fashioned bubble wands, these seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth and have been replaced by battery operated versions.} 3. Give the child a lollypop to suck on while doing close work. The vacuum created while sucking will pull the eyes in together. Give the child all of his drinks through a straw, and provide opportunities for resistive sucking, such as smoothies, juice boxes or drinkable yogurt. 4. Provide craft projects that challenge and motivate the child. Find lots of fun ideas here and here. 5. Play marbles, jacks, and other eye hand skill games. To improve pursuit fixation, or the ability of the eyes to track and maintain attention on stable and moving objects: 1. Have the child race a car on a lazy eight {sideways} speedway track on a chalk board or on the floor. 2. Play balloon tennis, either with rackets or hands. 3. Have the child jump on a bosu or mini trampoline while catching small beanbags and tossing them at targets around the room. 4. Play "I spy" or other visual games, like finding as many out of state license plates as you can, etc, while traveling in the car. 5. Blow some bubbles. Have the child chase and pop them. I give them a little claw toy or a pair of zoosticks to pop them with so that they are also working on fine motor skills. 6. Dim the lights and have the child chase the beam from a laser or a flashlight. This might be a fun activity on a summer evening at twilight with other children from the neighborhood. Or give the child his own flashlight and play tag with the beams. To improve visual memory: 1. Play concentration, where the child has to turn over cards and find matches. You can either do this with regular playing cards or buy a set. This teaches the child to develop good strategies for visual memory. If you type "memory games" into your search engine, you'll find quite a few sites that have games suitable for children. 2. Play "What's different?". Put three things on the table, have the child close his eyes, and then change one. Have the child tell you which one is different. Use more objects as he gets more skilled. 3. Place a covered tray with a dozen or so objects on a table, let the child look at it for 30 seconds, cover the tray, and have the child write down or tell you everything that he remembers. This is a fun group activity. To improve saccadic vision {the ability of the eyes to jump and fix, the skill required for reading} 1. Lacing, beading, coloring, and cutting activities. 2. Mazes, dot to dot, and tracing activities. 3. Have the child draw and paint while standing at an easel. 4. Weaving and sewing activities. To improve visual discrimination: 1. Play the "what's different in the picture? game. 2. Put together jigsaw puzzles, play Search a Word, and "Where's Waldo?" 3. Have the child sort things for you, like socks and silverware. 4. Nesting and stacking toys promote pattern recognition, which is critical for learning shapes of letters. 5. Play Connect Four, tic tac toe, and make a square. For figure ground: 1. Hide objects in an indoor sandbox: fill a large container full of beans, rice, packing pellets, etc. Hide little toys for the child to find. Or move this out to the garden and hide things in the grass or among the plants. 2. When reading a picture book together, play "I Spy" with the drawings. Describe something to the child and have him try to find it in the picture based on your description. Then have him find something and describe it to you for you to find. Have the child sit on a therapy ball while reading, watching television, or doing homework. The slight postural adjustments he makes while he's sitting will help stabilize and strengthen his back and his eyes. Or have the child lie on the floor on his belly propped up on his elbows while working for brief periods. This will strengthen the neck, which will help stabilize his eyes.

Simple Visual Closure Activity Here is a simple and easy visual closure activity with some cutting practice thrown in there. For t...

Often we play games with our children as a 'downtime' activity, but you can easily improve learning with visual perception games like these.

This pack is filled with many engaging and fun activities that can be used to teach visualizing! It is one of my favorite strategies to teach! Some of the activities were created for specific texts, but most of the activities can be used for a text of your choice. I hope this activity pack will nicely add to your current curriculum. This packet is aligned with the following first grade Common Core Standards: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.4 Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.7 Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events. This packet is aligned with the following second grade Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.7 Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot. Enjoy! ___________________________________ You may also like… → Visualizing Activities - Winter ___________________________________

Our annual list of optometrist-approved children’s toys. This year we have 131 gift ideas!

Looking for fun and creative fine motor activities? Check this idea for using sticky notes to create a masterpiece!

These bed posters are such an EASY way to visually help learners organize their b and d letter reversals. While I have other resources on the blog for helping learners with this, using “bed” is a classic one I’ve used for YEARS. These posters are a part of our larger, b and d Letter Reversals ... Read More about Bed Posters for b and d letter reversals