Visual Motor Skills for Kids

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 for Kids

Visual motor skills are made up of many areas related to vision and the ability to perceive sight with relation to movement of the hands and body in functional tasks.   Visual perceptual skills in kids are necessary for so many things…from self-care to fine motor skills, to gross motor skills…all parts of a child’s development require visual perception.  There are many pieces to the giant term of “visual perception”.  

Visual motor skills are needed for coordinating the hands, legs, and the rest of the body’s movements with what the eyes perceive.  There is more that plays into the integration of visual motor skills into what we do and how we use our hands in activities. Read on to find out more about how visual perception, eye-hand coordination, and visual processing skills play a part in the overarching visual motor skill development so we can perceive and process visual information and use that information with motor skills to manipulate and move objects in tasks and activities.

Visual Motor Activities

Kids rely on their development of visual perceptual skills for so many functional tasks.  From handwriting to self-care, visual motor skills are important!  This blog has so many ideas for activities to work on visual motor and eye hand coordination with kids!

Activities to help develop visual motor integration:

Looking for TONS of information that really explains how visual motor skills and visual perception are part of the whole visual processing system? All of these pieces play a part and work together. Join us in the Visual Processing Lab, a free email series that covers everything you need to know about visual motor skills, visual perception, and what you see in eye-hand coordination.

Visual processing lab and free email series that explains visual motor skills, visual perceptual skills, and eye-hand coordination.
 

Hand-Eye Coordination Activities for Kids

Hand-eye coordination is using the information received through the vision system to coordinate the hands with control, in order to complete a task, such as handwriting or catching a ball.

Below are TONS of activities designed to promote this skill.

 

Hand-Eye Coordination for Babies and Toddlers

The activities below can be used with all ages, but may be a great way to promote fine motor and visual motor skills in kids through eye-hand coordination tasks. Be sure to use supervision with children during these activities and remember that all activities should meet the individual child’s needs. Activities can be modified or adjusted as needed. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Visual Perception and Visual Motor

We have shared quite a few posts relating to vision and visual perception! 

Visual Spatial Relations is organizing the body in relation to objects or spatial awareness.  This is an important part of handwriting.  Spacing pieces of a puzzle amongst the others and writing in relation to the lines is one way to work on this skill.
 
 
 
 
 

Concentric Circle Painting

Line Matching with pipe cleaners

Color matching Elmer Activity

Word building with nature

Line awareness heart maze

Finger dexterity exercise

Winter scissor activity-cut icicles

Pencil Control candy cane

Sight word match with string

Giant motor planning maze

Line awareness bead picture

Create your own race track

Letters on the garage door

 
Visual Discrimination is determining differences in color, form, size, shape. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Visual Closure is the ability to fill in parts of a form in the mind’s eye to determine shape or a whole object.  
 
 
Visual Figure Ground is the ability to locate objects within a cluttered area (think “I Spy”).  Finding a red square among the pile of foam pieces is one fun way to work on this area of visual perception.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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