Eye Hand Coordination – Part of Preschooler Readiness
Handy Hints about Eye Hand Coordination
By now your child should be taking an interest in drawing and colouring. “Prep readiness” means that your child should be able to draw basic shapes such as squares and triangles. Don’t pressure tham to do these things – anxiety will cause them to lose interest quickly. Just observe them whilst you sit working together. If your child continues to avoid pencil paper tasks, cannot draw basic shapes, or holds their head at a strange angle, you should have their vision assessed.
What Sort of Things are Checked in a Prep eye test?
Many people mistakenly believe that if their child can’t read letters then they can’t have their eyes checked. This is a vital time to get children’s eyes tested. How well they concentrate and maintain attention at school will depend on how they focus their eyes, align their eyes together, move or track their eyes, coordinate their eyes & hands, and process visual information. These aspects will all be tested in our consultations that have been tailor-made for pre-schoolers.
Activities for Developing Good Eye Hand Coordination
- Threading activities such as macaroni on a string
- Scrunch up paper into a ball, then unscrunch in just one hand
- Ripping & tearing paper in precise ways using the thumb and index fingers on both hands (eg along a line – remember tearing the Mintie wrappers?!)
