Hand-eye Coordination And Visual Discrimination Key To Literacy
By Deanna Mascle, Fri Dec 9th
Sometimes the best thing you can do for your child’s earlyliteracy development is simply to let them play. Turn off the TVand anything battery operated then let your child pick up theirtoys, build blocks or duplos, or manipulate puzzles or gamepieces. Not only are you giving your child the gift ofchildhood, something we so often fail to do in today’s hectice,achievement-oriented world, but you are actually helping thembuild skills that are key to learning to read and write.
Hand-eye coordination is a necessary skill for written languageand the best way to help your child develop this skill is to letthem play with toys and activities that involve looking at,using, and discriminating a number of elements. Puzzles areobviously a great activity for this but so are manipulative toyssuch as blocks, duplos, and magnetix.
My son just spent over an hour this evening playing dominos withhis father — OK they weren’t so much playing as setting upcomplex pattterns and then knocking them down — but I didn’ttell them they were engaged in a preliteracy activity. They werejust having fun together.
Studies have shown that spending time on hand-eye coordinationactivities improves children’s ability to learn to read andlessens the difficulty they face during the process. In factengaging in a variety of craft activities, which most kids love,can be very beneficial so add play dough, stickers, and gluesticks to your list of educational supplies.
Research shows that early practice of hand-eye coordinationactivities reduces the risk for reading difficulties.
ACTIVITIES TO ENCOURAGE
Puzzles help develop hand-eye coordination because learning tocontrol hands and fingers according to information received fromsight is a coordination skill that aids children in earlyattempts at reading and writing. Determining out which piecegoes where, working to fit pieces into place by makingadjustments, and seeing a sequence develop in an organizedpattern can be a great learning experience as well as verysatisfying for children.
Puzzles, matching games, and the like are also important to helpchildren learn visual discrimination. Visual discrimination isthe ability of the brain to quickly tell the difference amongvisually similar letters, like “p,” “b,” and “q” or betweenwords such as “was” and “saw.” Students with difficulty makingthese distinctions often struggle with learning to read, write,and spell. Playing games, engaging in activities, or with toysthat help children discriminate among similar objects can be funfor the child and help them master an important preliteracyskill. My son loves to help his father sort change beforerolling it to be deposited at the bank. Sure we could use anelectronic sorter but our son loves to engage in the activityand it is a valuable learning experience for him.
Visual discrimination can often be learned with your child’sexisting toys. Matchbox cars, dolls, and action figures alloffer the opportunity for your child to learn visualdiscrimination.
Encourage children to work their wrist and finger muscles aswell as work on their coordination and small-motor skills tohelp prepare them for the handwriting practice in their future.Activities to help with these goals include legos and otherbuilding sets, playdough, puzzles, pegboards, beads and othertable toys. These fun, natural activities help children improvetheir cognitive and fine motor skills without frustration orboredom. My son engages in many activities every day thatencourage hand-eye coordination and visual discrimination. Idon’t suggest the activities to him. I make the toys andmanipulatives available to him and he chooses them on his own.The activities vary he may go an entire week building andrebuilding his wooden train set every day and then the next weekhis magnetix set dominates his play time. Some days he playswith both together and pulls in his duplos and wooden blocks foradded fun. It doesn’t matter to me which activity he choosesbecause I know he is having fun, challenging his imagination,andlearning.
About the author:Preschoolers Learn More newsletter offers afree tutorial to help you teach your child to read as well asother preschool resources at Teach YourChild To Read and TeachYour Child the Alphabet.
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October 18th, 2007 at 3:00 am
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Free Word Find Puzzle, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
December 28th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Thanks for the post. My wife and I are trying a few accelerated learning ideas to learn a foreign language. We just began but it\’s fun.
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