COVD Conference

Happy December! I have had a lot of great feedback from last blog post, titled Travel Therapy. I was going to do an individual blog on Stocking Stuffers, but the list I gave you on Travel Therapy, are all great gifts! Also, a fellow Vision Therapy Center in Brookfield, Mich., did a blog post titled 81 Vision Friendly Gifts for Kids. It has a great list a gifts for Christmas that help improve hand-eye coordination, visualization, and space perception.

Speaking of fellow vision therapists, I recently went to Fort Worth, Texas, for College of Optometrists in Vision Developement (COVD) conference. COVD does conferences once a year, and the course I took this year was called VT101. We discussed everything from the use of prisms and to sensory/motor fusion. After each class all the vision therapists would talk about all the different exercises we do. I met Vision Therapists from Denver, Colorado to Canada. I came back to the office with more knowledge and FUN activities that all my patients have enjoyed.

All in all, it was great to get all the vision therapists from around the world together. It is great to be surrounded around people who are just as passionate about Vision Therapy as you are.

Until next week we will chat about some of the new stuff in our Vision Therapy area. Have a great weekend! 

Travel Therapy!

It is the holiday season, which means... lots of road trips coming our way. When I was growing up, my family traveled at least five hours to see our relatives. I remember coloring, listening to my cassette player (oh yeah!), playing Yahtzee with my brother, and playing "I Spy". Nowadays, most of our kids are playing with electronics or watching TV.

Today's blog is called Travel Therapy for a reason! I am going to give you some great Vision Therapy exercises to do on the road (or airplane)! Your children with have no idea they are doing therapy!

 Travel Bag Goodies:

1. Hidden Pictures: This improves your child’s Figure Ground skills.
1. Search Google - Printable Hidden Pictures.
2. Or go to Amazon!
2. If you remember from this blog: Put a small sticker on the window nearest your child, and instruct him/her to look at the sticker for a few seconds, then to look outside at the farthest thing their eyes can find, and then back at the sticker again. Have your child do this at least 10 times every time they get in the car.  
3. Word Searches: Improves Visual Closure and Figure Ground skills. 

1.      Search Google - Printable Word Searches 

2.      Or go to Amazon!     

4. Color by number- Works on Visual Motor skills, Saccades, improves their                  number recognition skills as they identify and match each number with its corresponding color using a number. 
1. Search Google - Printable Color by Number
2.  Or go to Amazon!
5. Dot-to-Dot: Improves Visual Closure Skills and Visual Motor skills.

1.      Search Google - Printable Dot-to-Dot

2.      Or go to Amazon!

6.      Play "I Spy" with your children - Improves Figure Ground skills. 

7.      Mazes: Improves Pursuits, Figure Ground, Spatial Relations skills.

1.      Search Google- Printable Mazes

2.      Or go to Amazon! 

As you can see, there are many fun ways to do Vision Therapy on the road. These are all easy things to do with your children, and it doesn't cost a lot of money. Make the games fun and I promise these games are the way to go! You can do therapy wherever your holiday plans take you. 

VII: Visual Closure

We have come to the end of our seven-part Perceptual Skill blog series. This post focuses (a little Vision Therapy humor) on Visual Closure, which is the ability to visualize a complete whole when given incomplete information or a partial picture. 

Why is this important? It is the foundation skill for fluency and speed in reading and writing. This skill helps children read and comprehend quickly; their eyes don't have to individually process every letter in every word for them to quickly recognize the word by sight. This skill can also help children recognize inferences and predict outcomes that they experience through their daily lives. 

Children with poor visual closure may have difficulty completing a thought. They may also confuse similar objects or words, especially words with close beginning or endings.

These activities aim to help a child organize and integrate what they see to create a recognizable visual image:

  1. Jigsaws

  2. Dot to dot

  3. Coloring in

  4. Word searches

  5. Writing or drawing in sand or foam

  6. Incomplete sentences. Fill in the missing letters or words

  7. Matching complete and incomplete shapes

  8. Construction games

  9. Scrabble

10. Stencils

11. Model making

12. Building 3D models. E.g. K'nex

13. Partially covering a picture and asking the child to identify the whole.

There you have it! This was a great series to learn more about how we perceive things. I hope this was a great learning experience for you. I have a some great blog entries coming up for this upcoming holiday season. Looking forward to all that is to come!

Here is the complete series of Perceptual Skills:

I.Visual Discrimination

II. Visual Memory

III.Spatial Relations

IV. Form Constancy

V. Sequential Memory

VI. Figure Ground

Part VI: Figure Ground

Happy November! We are almost coming to the end of our series about the perceptual skills.

Today we are going to discuss Figure-Ground. This skill helps us learn to visually isolate one object from a group of objects. For example, has your child asked, "Mom, I can't find my shoes?!" Of course, those shoes are right under your child's nose. Besides inattention, it could be the result of your child having difficulty distinguishing the “figure” (shoes) from the background (the other shoes in the closet), the “background.” Note where this skill gets its name. Makes sense, right?

Let's break this down. First, perception is what goes on in our internal mental world: how we organize and give meaning to raw data which we receive from the outside world through our senses.

There are two types of Figure Ground perceptions (just like Sequential Memory):

· Auditory figure-ground perception: is the ability to hear the voice of one speaker over the   background noises (music, other conversations, road noises).

· Visual figure-ground perception: is an inborn tendency which allows us to distinguish objects from a background.

Can you image how it might affect your child if he has a figure-ground weakness? Some examples of a child having figure-ground weakness may find difficulties in:

· Keeping their place when reading and scanning from one word to the next.

· Finding a word in a dictionary.

· Copying from a book or board, because they are prone to losing their place or omitting sections of work.

· Understanding pictures because they struggle to differentiate the outlines from the background.  

· Paying attention because it is hard to focus on one object while ignoring or blocking out the background. 

Practical ideas to improve figure-ground perception:

· When reading, use a book marker below the sentence that is being read.

· Play “I spy” games.

· Carry out specific instructions that involve looking for and fetching specific things (find the red pencil in the box; look for a picture of a flower on this page; design a treasure hunt).

· Sort objects according to shape, size, color, thickness, etc.

· Identify objects in pictures with a lot of detail

· Use tracing paper to trace patterns or complete mazes, do dot-to-dot or spot-the-difference pictures.

· Write a sentence without spacing between the words. Help the child to find the words by placing the spaces correctly.

· Word searches

· Find words in a dictionary.

Next week, is our last perceptual skill: Visual Closure. Have a great weekend! If you are just joining us here is the link to the beginning of our take on Perceptual Skills, Part I.

Part V: Sequential Memory

Hope all is well in the Vision Therapy world!

Last week I was in Fort Worth, Texas, for a COVD seminar. It was a great experience to interact with other therapists. I will expand more on my experience in the next couple of posts.

Today's blog is going to be about Sequential Memory. There are two types of Sequential Memory we work on here: Auditory and Visual Sequencing. Auditory Sequential and Visual Sequential Memory skills are the ability to remember things heard and seen in sequence.  

Students that have trouble with both Sequential Memories experience difficulty copying from the board, learning to read, remembering what they have read, and being able to complete a task in the order they were given.

If there is difficulties with both, can you imagine how hard school can be? As you can imagine saying 91 + 1 or 19 + 1 or spelling “t-a-r” instead of “r-a-t” or reading “dog” instead of “god” could completely change the meaning of a situation.

Sequential Memory is very important perceptual skill in our everyday life. If you would like some steps to help improve both skills, email me at: vt@rdeye.com.  

 

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!

Part III: Spatial Relations

For the last couple weeks we have been talking about Perceptual Skills. I hope you are enjoying them as much as I am. Today we are going to blog about Spatial Relations. I found a great website by Michelle Pratt, who is an Occupational Therapist.  I loved her website because she gave fun activities to improve each Perceptual Skill. Here is her take on Spatial Relations:

Visual Spatial Relations

Visual Spatial perception provides us with information about our environment. The way a child perceives space and their position or orientation within that space can affect their gross motor skills and classroom performance. It is the ability to distinguish differences among similar objects or forms. This skill helps children in understanding relationships and recognizing underlying concepts. This area is closely related to the problem solving and conceptual skills required for higher level science and math.  

Visual Spatial Orientation-- helps us with letter reversals. The most common cause of reversals in older children is a lack of visual spatial development--consistently knowing left from right, either in relationship to their own bodies or in the world around them. Children with poor visual processing have not developed adequate skills in visual perception and spatial orientation, such as laterality and directionality. 

Definition

Is the ability to understand and interpret relationships:

a. Between oneself and other people. E.g. Stand behind Mommy

b. Between oneself and other objects. E.g. put the chair beside Daddy

c. Objects in relation to other objects. E.g. put the brick in the box.

A child with visual spatial problems may have difficulty with:

1. Interpreting instructions. E.g. write your name at the top of the page.

2. Dressing. Putting garments on up side down or being unable to turn them the right way round.

3. Correctly positioning equipment, such as utensils at meal times.

4. Moving themselves in space. In PE games or when doing gymnastics or obstacle courses.

5. Tracking mazes.

6. Copying patterns or Lego models.

7. Producing 3D drawings E.g. Houses, boxes or cubes.

8. Setting out work on a page, particularly mathematical problems or diagrams.

9. Labeling diagrams.

Activities to help

Activities for yourself and one other person or a group1. Simon Says
2. Leapfrog
3. Crawl under someone's legs
4. Stand beside the tallest person
5. Cat and mouse games
6. Arrange people to make shapes
7. Obstacle courses
8. Hopscotch
9. Games with hoops, beanbags and boxes.
10. Setting a table
11. Board games e.g. Othello, chess, etc.
12 Craft activities e.g. collage, origami
13. Construction games e.g. Lego, building a railway track or fort.

Copying Activities

Activities requiring copying 3D to 3D

1. Construction toys e.g. Lego
2. Multi link
3. Peg patterns

4. Patterns with objects using different shapes, sizes and colors.

Activities requiring copying 2D to 3D

In these the child makes the model from copying a card, picture or photograph.

1. Block or peg patterns
2. Model making from pictorial instructions e.g. Lego, K'nex
3. Following a recipe when cooking
4. Origami, copying diagrams in a book.

Activities requiring copying 2D to 2D

1. Copying a picture

2. Copying from the whiteboard

3. Constructing a drawing.

The above activities are great in more ways than one. We all know I love hands on activities more than electronics! Give some of these activities a try and next week we will talk about Form Constancy! Have a great weekend!