Hand-eye coordination refers to the capacity to use vision skills to guide hand movements. It works with fine motor skills (e.g. picking something up) and gross motor skills (e.g. learning to walk). Hand-eye coordination develops naturally as your child grows. However, as parents, we can do a few things with our kids from a young age to help them to enhance their coordination skills.
1. Threading activities
Threading allows our children to practice working with two hands. Threading helps to build Grasping skills and eye-hand coordination. It is super simple. We can use whatever you have lying around your house. You can start this activity at the age of 12 months. Toddlers of 12 months to 2 years often start trying to thread big beads or objects but not with much control. By the age of 4 years to 5 years, a child should be able to thread regular-sized playing beads and even make patterns while stringing them.
2. Posting Activities
The action of placing an object into a container by passing it through a slot or smaller opening is known as posting activities. Posting activities teach the child to release an object into a container and begin to understand object permanence (i.e., when something goes away, it can come back). This activity helps kids to explore, develop, and learn important concepts. Babies build this skill by picking up and handling objects, looking at them closely, and feeling their textures and shapes. A baby from up to the age of 12 months enjoys these activities.
3. Opening and Closing Activities
Another way to develop hand-eye coordination is to provide opportunities for them to open and close various containers. These are amazingly popular with children of one to two years. These are great preliminary practical life exercises for eye-hand coordination, which helps develop concentration and a sense of order. Create your opening and closing activities from containers and bags found at home. Use old purses with clasps, empty jars, containers with press stud fasteners, wallets with zippers, and so on.
4. Pegboard and elastic bands; nuts and bolts
These activities are great ways to refine children's fine motor skills. Stretching elastic bands across a pegboard helps kids so much. With one hand holding the bolt and the other twisting the nut, the youngster may screw a nut onto the bolt, allowing both hands to work together. These activities are ideal for a 2 ½ or 3-year-old. You can start with nuts and bolts of the same diameter, and as your child masters the skill, you can increase the challenge by varying the diameters. Provide a variety of nut and bolt sizes so that children can sort them by size.
Note: Make sure your child is no longer putting objects in his mouth.
5. Sorting Games
Toddlers become interested in sorting objects by colour, type, and size. This method refines each of the child's senses one by one. The idea is to train the brain to think more logically. Supply a group of objects in a large bowl to sort into smaller bowls. Buttons of two or three various colours, sizes, and forms, shells of two or three different sorts, and nuts in their shells of two or three distinct kinds are all useful sorting objects.
6. Stereognostic bags
Stereognosis is the capacity to recognise an object based on how it feels. Around the age of 2.5, the kid will become interested in determining the identity of an object just by touching it. Then the fun begins with stereotypic bags, sometimes known as mystery bags. Put a variety of items in a bag (preferably one that is tough to glance inside). Children can put their hands in and guess what they feel, or we can mention an item in the bag. Place random objects, objects with a theme, or paired objects with two of the same of each item in the bag. We can choose objects with distinct shapes, such as keys or spoons, and things that are difficult to distinguish, such as animals.
7. Puzzles
Pulling apart puzzles is a favourite pastime of babies and young toddlers. Knob puzzles, in which the puzzle parts fit into a specific shape, are ideal for this age group. From 18 months, the child should be able to do some simple shapes onto the puzzle base. Young children do not complete a jigsaw puzzle the same way as adults. Adults are more likely to seek out the corners and edges first, but children, on the other hand, are more likely to approach the puzzle spatially, determining which forms go together. When they initially begin working on jigsaw puzzles, we can take turns showing them how to put them together or give them two pieces at a time that fit together. They'll eventually do more and more things on their own until they've mastered them.
Toddlers continuously sharpen their grasp and practise functioning with two hands together with these activities. All we have to look for is to find new ways to challenge these movements.
