Part IV: Form Constancy

How many activities from last weeks blog did you incorporate into your child's day? I used a lot during my therapy sessions with my patients!

This week is about Form Constancy, which is the ability to mentally turn and rotate objects in our minds and picture what they would look like. This skill helps us distinguish differences in size, shape, and orientation. When a child has poor form-constancy you will notice they frequently reverse letters and numbers.

Some great exercises to improve Form Constancy can be found:

       1. Eye Can Learn - A great website that has games for each perceptual skill. But limit computer use!

       2. Again, from Mrs. Pratt's Classroom, she has listed great activities to improve Form Constancy.

  

And I have some for you too!

Visual Form Constancy Activities

• Cut out various sizes and colors of shapes. Hold up one and have the child point to the ones that are the same.
• Have the child locate a variety of geometrical shapes in a room (clock is a circle).
• Practice sorting, naming, and classifying various shapes and objects.
• Moving into and out of named shapes drawn on the ground with sidewalk chalk.
• Identifying shapes, letters, or pictures, drawn on the back with a finger.
• Recognizing shapes and forms in pictures (magazines, books).
• Filling in or coloring shapes/forms.
• Copying shapes or forms using pegboard, parquetry, or block designs.
• Making shapes with toothpicks, straws, pipe cleaners.

These are all great activities that are easy and fun. My favorites are making shapes with pipe cleaners and locating shapes in a room. Try them out and have fun!