You may not realize it, but over 80% of all information a child takes in is through the visual system, making vision the key sense used in the classroom. This is why visual therapy for children can be one of the most effective types of therapy for children who are struggling at school.

What is Visual Therapy for Children?

While there are many types of therapy children struggling at school can receive, including speech, occupational and behavioural therapy, visual therapy for children consists of a series of visually based exercises designed to improve the effectiveness of vision. For most of these children, the issue is not blurred vision but rather are they using their visual system to its maximum capacity for learning.

Visual therapy for children develops the skills that they need to learn effectively. Sure, most children develop these skills in the end, but if they are significantly delayed for year then the learning potential of the child is severely reduced.

What Skills Does Visual Therapy for Children Enhance?

Over a period of several months (that’s right, not years, only months), visual therapy for children can develop skills like focusing, eye coordination, eye tracking, visualization, coding and sequencing. These skills have very little to do with just seeing the print, but have everything to do with understanding, recognizing words, flowing in reading and the like.

Visual therapy for children helps them to develop the skills that they need to read, write and spell effectively. This type of program can be made fun with lots of games, so the kids can really enjoy what they are doing as they develop the skills they need to learn.

Can Visual Therapy for Children be Done at Home?

The great news is that visual therapy for children can be done at home. Many Behavioral Optometrists offer expensive, in-office programs, and these can be very effective, but many of the exercises can be performed very effectively at home. In my office, I coordinate an extensive 6 month home program of visual therapy for children and we are getting the best results I have ever seen.

The real power of a home based program is that it can be done every single day. It does not require time set aside to travel to an office, but it can be efficiently pursued each day, allowing lots of small steps of improvement.

Learning disabilities are frequently visually based, and when they are an effective home program of visual therapy for children works very well.

Preschool Materials Are the Building Blocks for Future Success

Preschool or Prep is not the support act before the main event of a child’s schooling career, and it is not a glorified childcare center.  It is the launching pad upon which a child’s academic career desperately depends, so using the right preschool materials is essential to provide the right foundation for the child’s development.

Often preschool material offers fun and enjoyment for the children without providing techniques of real substance.  This means that the kids enjoy the program, and are kept amused for a time, but they may not be gaining the essential visual skills they need for the coming years.  A visually based program is often not only fun but also training the children for future success, and isn’t that what we all want for your kids?

Preschool Materials Should be Visually Based

As I stated before, vision is the dominant sense in the classroom and so it makes sense that the most powerful preschool materials are based around vision.  In a world of video and DVD, many young children are failing to develop the skills of visualizing, eye movement control and laterality, and this can severely affect their ability to learn spelling words and read. Yet the injection of some simple, interesting, fun and inexpensive therapies into their learning day can alleviate these problems in no time!

Preschool Materials Must be Fun and Interesting

However, preschool materials do not only need to be helpful in developing skills, they need to be fun and interesting.  The must involve the real world and not simply a computer screen, and they need to be hands on and whole body to be effective with young children.

Yet, in addition to fun, the best preschool materials are designed by professionals like myself in the field, because we know the type of therapies and exercises that will yield quick and effective results in children.  In fact, I use modified versions of the therapies we use in our Behavioral Optometry office for children with learning disabilities in later grades, because we are trying to train the same visual skills, and do so with spectacular results!

So if you want the very best and most effective preschool materials, which can be surprisingly inexpensive, I encourage you to seek those which are visually based and designed by a vision professional, preferably a Behavioral Optometrist.

Learning Vision Skills is Essential

The development of correct learning vision skills is an essential part of a child’s overall development in the preschool years.  Yet the vision skills development is most often overlooked in preschool curriculums, severely affecting the development of many who go on to have learning disabilities.  We spend time developing a child’s gross motor skills, fine motor skills and social skills, but most often these essential learning vision skills are overlooked, to the long-term detriment of the child’s development.

In the classroom, vision is the dominant sense being responsible for around 80% of all information a child takes in.  Therefore it makes sense that training vision skills can help them take in and understand visual information and thereby enhance the learning process.  It is essential that we not only identify these learning vision skills, but also find a way to quickly and effectively trained them so that the child’s ability to learn can be enhanced to its maximum level.

Learning Vision Skills is Fun

As a behavioral optometrist who is worked in the area of learning vision skills for over 20 years I have seen thousands of success stories by enhancing and training the skills.  The really great thing is that the techniques required to enhance these learning vision skills are simple, fun and enthusiastically embraced by both children and their parents.  We have developed a number of games and therapy techniques that get preschool children excited, thereby making the development of these essential skills fun and enjoyable instead of boring and tedious.

Learning Vision Skills

The question is not whether these learning vision skills can be enhanced but rather what is the fastest and most effective way of training them?  There are a number of interesting and fun games and techniques that can make the process of learning visual skills enjoyable, and these do not involve expensive computer programs or consultations with professionals. These require only a small outlay and a regular but small amount of work, but the long term effect can be stunning in the life of your child.

So, if your child is in the preschool years, take the time to develop the areas that really count in the long term for your child’s reading development.  Learning vision skills in preschool can save you from a lifetime of learning disability heartache!

Kindergarten Games are More Than Just Games!

Kindergarten games need to do more than just fun games children play together.  Children can go anywhere and play any number of games in the early developing years, and have loads of fun along the way, but is this the best thing to help develop their inquiring minds that gives him the right skills they need to tackle school?

The fact is that not all kindergarten games are the same!  Some kindergarten games are simply that: enjoyable games that children can play but have very little effect on the future.  As any preschool parent would know, having fun and playing games is an essential part of growing up, whether they help the child in the future or whether they simply just games.

However, the best kindergarten games are those which develop within the child skills and abilities that they can use in the future, and that lay the groundwork for future academic achievement.

Kindergarten Games Can Have a Profound Effect on Future Academic Achievement!

The right kinds of kindergarten games can have an incredible effect on a child’s future academic ability.  This is because the right games develop skills and abilities that the child can draw on through the coming years, and helped them avoid the developmental pitfalls which many children with learning disabilities face.

Using carefully crafted and targeted kindergarten games, we can help to develop many aspects of a child’s life, including social, gross and fine motor and direction concepts.  As a behavioral Optometrist, I have seen the right kind of kindergarten games develop visual skills which children will draw upon throughout the school career to help them in their learning.

Kindergarten Games Can Build Essential Visual Skills

If a child is going to do well at school, especially in reading, writing and spelling, they need to develop the visual skills necessary for reading.  It is far better for these children to develop the skills they need before they Grade 1, rather than later on down the track, and that’s where the right type of kindergarten games come in.

After a lot of research I have discovered a number of great kindergarten games the child template which develop these essential visual skills.  These take the form of a vision therapy program, training the visual system to make it ready for learning, and because I have use kindergarten games rather than more formalized therapies, the compliance from young children is extremely high.  This means that from the child’s perspective they are playing fun games, but from the parent’s perspective they know they are developing the skills necessary for future academic achievement.

This is why parents must choose the light of activities the children play carefully.  There is more to playing games than simply playing games: the right kindergarten games can build the right visual skills in children that will serve them in their learning for rest of their lives.

Preschool Materials are More Than Just Fun

It is true that having fun is an essential part of good preschool materials, the best preschool materials go far beyond the fun aspect and begin to lay the groundwork for skills that the child will use in the future.  As a behavioural optometrist, I see preschool and prep as essential launch pads for a child’s visual development, enabling them to develop visual skills which will serve them long into their academic career.

So while many parents just see games and fun for the preschoolers, I believe that preschool materials which develop these essential visual skills are incredibly powerful in laying the groundwork for future success.  That being said, if these exercises which develop visual skills are not fun,  compliance is poor and most young children will quickly tire of the therapies.  So fun and games are important, but they are even more important if they are coupled with the right preschool materials which develop the right visual skills in our children.

What Can Preschool Materials Develop?

The right preschool materials can begin to develop important visual skills, even in young children.  I have successfully used vision therapy to develop skills such as convergence, focus, I am movements and tracking, visualization and visual memory, laterality the reversals, coding and sequencing, as well as gross and fine motor control.

There is no question that the right vision therapy can develop these essential skills in preschoolers, thereby setting them up for long-term success in school by giving them the edge they need early on.  The trick is to produce these therapies in the form of games and fun tasks so that preschoolers will do the necessary exercises, and enjoy the overall experience.

Preschool Materials That Really Work

That is why, as a behavioral optometrist, I have spent many hours researching and developing fun yet powerful vision therapy exercises, designed to capture the attention and enthusiasm of young children as well as developing the visual skills that they need to face their academic career.  Using simple techniques, cunningly applied in fun games and activities, we can provide preschool materials that really work for developing the visual system.

Preschool materials need to be fun, but they need also to be so much more than that!  Simply having fun in preschool prep is not enough in the 21st century, so in addition to the fun we also need to provide an environment whereby the visual skills necessary for future academic achievement are developed.

So when you are considering what to do with your child, and how to help them set up a platform so that they will not struggle but rather excel at school, you need to consider preschool materials that combine fun and interesting tasks with the right kind of visual development.

Your Preschool Homeschool Curriculum Must Be Fun

Finding a preschool homeschool curriculum which is fun is important, because in these early years of development having fun should be a real priority.  However, many of the games and techniques that you might find to fill up your preschool homeschool curriculum may not be enhancing skills that your child will need in the future in order to learn effectively.  There’s nothing wrong with having fun, but mixed in with the fun activities most parents also want to provide a way that their child can develop to become an effective student throughout their whole life.

Your Preschool Homeschool Curriculum Must Be Targeted

The best curriculum is one that mixes both fun and targeted exercises to develop your child’s skills so that when they move into school, they can become good students.  It is not enough to simply have fun when you have the opportunity to have a long-lasting effect on your child’s learning ability within your preschool homeschool curriculum.

In the classroom, vision is the dominant sense with up to 80% of all information of child processes coming via the visual system.  It therefore makes perfect sense to develop your child’s visual skills as part of your preschool homeschool curriculum, because this will give them an edge when it comes to learning in future years.  If you can find a way to quickly and effectively develop the necessary visual skills for learning, and incorporated all into your curriculum, then you will be giving your child a clear advantage which will serve them well throughout their life!

How To Incorporate Visual Skills Development into Your Preschool Homeschool Curriculum

It is not a difficult task to incorporate the development of visual skills into your preschool homeschool curriculum.  Many of the basic visual skills are enhanced by fun and interesting games which children love to play, and which are easy to integrate with your preschool homeschool curriculum to bring out the very best in your child.

The big question is what games do you play, how do you structure them and which ones will really develop the skills that your child needs to perform well for many years to come.  As a papal optometrists, I’ve developed a specialized program which is easy to incorporate into your preschool homeschool curriculum to help you develop these necessary skills in your child.  It is quick, inexpensive and a whole lot of fun, and it could provide you with happy learning in a great school experience for your child, rather than years of struggle and difficulty.

If you want the best for your child throughout their school career, it is important that preschool becomes a time of development in every way. Injecting the development of visual skills into your preschool homeschool curriculum can supercharge your child’s learning ability long into the future!

preschool homeschool curriculum