Games for the Eyes that You Can Play Just About Anywhere

Games for the Eyes were inspired after one of my clients traveled to Taiwan and when they came back they brought me some “fun activity books for children”. Every activity in the books related to visual processing. It got me thinking about how important visual processing skills are for every child and that there are ways to make it fun. For children who have visual processing deficits, it will be far more motivating to exercise their eyes if they are laughing while they learn. Try these enjoyable visual processing activities that you can do anywhere, anytime.

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What Did I Add Drawing?

One of my favorite games is to make a What Did I Add Drawing? All you need is a piece of paper and a writing utensil. This is a game to play with a partner. One partner starts by drawing a simple picture. Then have partner #1 close their eyes while partner #2 adds something to the picture. Partner #1 then has to find what was added and then it is their turn to add something while Partner #2 closes their eyes. As the game progresses it will become harder and harder to find what was added. You can adjust the level by making the newly added detail easier or harder to find.

The What Did I Add Drawing Game exercises visual attention, visual memory, and visual scanning.

I Spy Sight Words

When you are out in the community try playing I Spy Sight Words. It works the same way as the Alphabet Game except that in this version you try to find the letters to complete a sight word. For example, you may choose “cat” as the target word. Then whoever finds the letters “c”, “a” and “t” in the correct order gets a point. Another version would be to give the child a paper with pictures. Have the child either look for the items in the pictures while you are driving or walking. Have them choose one of the drawings and find something that starts with the same letter.

I Spy Sight Words exercises visual scanning and reading skills.

Magazine Maze

I will probably be showing my age with this one, but when I was a child my parents would pile us into the station wagon and take us to do errands. Now, they did not really want us slowing them down while they did their shopping but they also did not want to leave us at home alone to get into unspecified mischief, so they would make us wait in the car. This left many boring minutes to fill as we did not each possess our own hand-held electronic games to occupy our time. To pass the time, we would make up games with materials that we had in the car. Magazine Maze was one of those games. Take a page from a magazine and have a race to see who can go from the top to the bottom without going through a word or picture.

Magazine Maze exercises visual attention and visual tracking.

What Do You Remember Seeing?

Another easy game is What Do You Remember Seeing?. Open a book and choose a picture. Have the child look at the picture for a few seconds, then close the book and see how many things that they can remember. Ask questions like, “How many stars did you see?” about the picture.

What Do You Remember Seeing? exercises visual attention, visual scanning, and visual memory.

Puzzle Pictures

For a quick and easy activity take a picture you have lying around. It's easy to just tear a page from a magazine. Then cut the picture into puzzle pieces. You can make the puzzle pieces large for begginers or smaller for a more advanced puzzler.

Puzzle Pictures works on visual spatial skills.

Children will benefit from playing vision games. Eye exercises will help children navigate school work with far more ease as they develop vision skills. There are so many visual processing activities you can have the children do but it is far more motivating when a child has fun while they learn.