Developing Good Visual Skills
"Challenges to Changes", Submitted to the IHEA Informer for the Jan/Feb, 1998 Issue
By: Marcia B. Blackwood, Phone: 317.375.1775, E-Mail: [email protected]
Building superior visual skills is much easier for most children than developing good auditory skills. Our society has become very oriented to visual input from the entertainment industry. That input from television, computers, electronic games, movies, and the like, has frequently developed within our children some excellent visual skills.
What if you are not sure your child has acquired these visual skills? If we were to follow a child from birth to his or her present age, there are some definite ways that you can help him gain visual skills that will be valuable all through his schooling. We can begin with the kind of stimulation a baby needs visually. Faces are particularly interesting to babies, especially those of his parents. Keep within 12 to 18 inches from the baby so you are within his sight. Large pictures of faces are also valuable input for babies.
Next we want to present large pieces of posterboard with patterns of black and white. Checkerboards, polka dots, curvy lines, bull’s eyes, triangles and other shapes will all be visually exciting. Then you can add black and white faces – just line drawings of a circle with eyes and a nose and mouth. Begin to add some complexity to your drawings. Have fun with these strongly contrasting figures and shapes.
As your child develops, you will want to start using pictures to develop receptive language – what he understands. Go from pictures of faces and shapes to pictures of things. You want to introduce pictures that are things in the baby’s immediate environment, such as pictures of their family, their toys, their crib, their room, etc. As they become familiar with these, you are doing several things simultaneously. You’re showing them a picture (stimulating the visual system), you’re naming the picture (stimulating the auditory system AND developing receptive language), and you are also developing expressive language because after the child receives sufficient input, they will start to bring those things out in speech.
Expand on the pictures you started with pictures of the things in other parts of the house, pictures outside the house, in the community and in the world. As you start moving out, you are expanding the baby’s world bigger and bigger. You can then move to anything of interest to your child – dinosaurs, airplanes, flowers, bugs, butterflies, sports figures, tools, cars, horses and a myriad of other topics.
You will be amazed that while teaching him what all those things are, he is picking up a lot of information in addition, and learning to love those cards or pictures. Some parents go to a lot of trouble making picture cards and then protecting them. Resist the urge to protect those cards. Laminate them if you must, but then let the child have access to them. You really want to make these cards your child’s favorite toy. Let HIM pick them up, study them, shuffle them, and provide himself with some input in the meanwhile. Be sure to provide your child with the best quality, clean, highest interest cards you can obtain. You may even find you enjoy the cards enough to make “picture units” for your child and then use them in a rapid flash method with him. You need only to pick a subject of HIGH interest (to him), find pictures of that subject matter, create flashcards out of that group of pictures, and then VERY RAPIDLY flash the cards to him (½ to 1 second intervals), naming the pictures as you flash them. Change the order each time you go through the series. Do this several times a day with each time being about 2 minutes or less.
Good quality visual input develops good visual processing. Television and video games provide good quality input, but please use wisdom and guide your children in what they see. The eyes are the entrance to the heart and soul of your child. Use all caution to avoid allowing your child to see ungodly films of play games that may undermine your family’s values and standards.
If you want to work on visual processing specifically, please call me at (317) 375-1775 or ask about a reprint of the article that includes information about how you can increase your child’s processing skills by working on it a few minutes each day.
Back to Teaching and Educating
By: Marcia B. Blackwood, Phone: 317.375.1775, E-Mail: [email protected]
Building superior visual skills is much easier for most children than developing good auditory skills. Our society has become very oriented to visual input from the entertainment industry. That input from television, computers, electronic games, movies, and the like, has frequently developed within our children some excellent visual skills.
What if you are not sure your child has acquired these visual skills? If we were to follow a child from birth to his or her present age, there are some definite ways that you can help him gain visual skills that will be valuable all through his schooling. We can begin with the kind of stimulation a baby needs visually. Faces are particularly interesting to babies, especially those of his parents. Keep within 12 to 18 inches from the baby so you are within his sight. Large pictures of faces are also valuable input for babies.
Next we want to present large pieces of posterboard with patterns of black and white. Checkerboards, polka dots, curvy lines, bull’s eyes, triangles and other shapes will all be visually exciting. Then you can add black and white faces – just line drawings of a circle with eyes and a nose and mouth. Begin to add some complexity to your drawings. Have fun with these strongly contrasting figures and shapes.
As your child develops, you will want to start using pictures to develop receptive language – what he understands. Go from pictures of faces and shapes to pictures of things. You want to introduce pictures that are things in the baby’s immediate environment, such as pictures of their family, their toys, their crib, their room, etc. As they become familiar with these, you are doing several things simultaneously. You’re showing them a picture (stimulating the visual system), you’re naming the picture (stimulating the auditory system AND developing receptive language), and you are also developing expressive language because after the child receives sufficient input, they will start to bring those things out in speech.
Expand on the pictures you started with pictures of the things in other parts of the house, pictures outside the house, in the community and in the world. As you start moving out, you are expanding the baby’s world bigger and bigger. You can then move to anything of interest to your child – dinosaurs, airplanes, flowers, bugs, butterflies, sports figures, tools, cars, horses and a myriad of other topics.
You will be amazed that while teaching him what all those things are, he is picking up a lot of information in addition, and learning to love those cards or pictures. Some parents go to a lot of trouble making picture cards and then protecting them. Resist the urge to protect those cards. Laminate them if you must, but then let the child have access to them. You really want to make these cards your child’s favorite toy. Let HIM pick them up, study them, shuffle them, and provide himself with some input in the meanwhile. Be sure to provide your child with the best quality, clean, highest interest cards you can obtain. You may even find you enjoy the cards enough to make “picture units” for your child and then use them in a rapid flash method with him. You need only to pick a subject of HIGH interest (to him), find pictures of that subject matter, create flashcards out of that group of pictures, and then VERY RAPIDLY flash the cards to him (½ to 1 second intervals), naming the pictures as you flash them. Change the order each time you go through the series. Do this several times a day with each time being about 2 minutes or less.
Good quality visual input develops good visual processing. Television and video games provide good quality input, but please use wisdom and guide your children in what they see. The eyes are the entrance to the heart and soul of your child. Use all caution to avoid allowing your child to see ungodly films of play games that may undermine your family’s values and standards.
If you want to work on visual processing specifically, please call me at (317) 375-1775 or ask about a reprint of the article that includes information about how you can increase your child’s processing skills by working on it a few minutes each day.
Back to Teaching and Educating