Visual discrimination is the ability to recognize details in visual images. It allows your LO to identify the size, shape or form, colour and position of objects and printed materials. It also enables your LO to identify likeness and difference between specific images.
What is a child actually doing when matching colours, shapes or sizes? Building visual discrimination skills of course!
Being able to visually discriminate differences and similarities between objects is a key skill, and one that your LO will use later in math and reading and well…practically everything.
Think for example, the slight differences in a ‘b’ and a cursive ‘d’. For a child who is just beginning to learn letters, this subtle difference can be very difficult. But if a child has practiced keenly observing small variations in an image or color or shape, they will be better prepared to detect differences in letter shapes!
There are plenty of activities you can do at home to help your child develop visual discrimination skills. Yes, including matching games!
Start at a skill level that is challenging, but not too challenging, for your child:
Sorting Cutlery: Set up a sorting activity with forks and spoons. As your child improves, try only spoons, but two different sizes or patterns, or colors.
Next, if you have them, try a sorting cutlery activity with different materials like metal and plastic!
2. Sorting Fruits: Pick three / four different types of fruits, in various colors, so you’re left with several items to be sorted by type and / color. Provide a separated tray for your child to sort! You can ask your LO to sort first by similar fruits......
......and then by color
3. Matching Games! Start with simple matching games, you can shop for the Memory Card Game by ProjectBaby here, or make your own with a pencil, crayon and card stock (for durability)!
The Memory Card Game by ProjectBaby contains cards with various shapes; such as squares, triangle, circle, rectangle, oval, pyramid, and hexagon – in various colors. By their nature, some of these shapes are strikingly similar; for example, circle / oval, square / rectangle. Discriminating between them would require your Los concentration and observation.
4. Opposites: Read picture books about Opposites, and discuss with your LO the differences between the 2 pictures, emphasizing the concept of “same” and “different”.
5. Laundry time! Give your LO a pile of clean socks and ask him / her to put two alike socks together to make a pair. You can make this activity more challenging by mixing 2 sizes of socks in the pile.
6. Reading: Look through picture books together and ask your LO to tell you what he / she sees in the picture. Then tell your LO to point out specific objects. Begin with easy to spot items then increase the difficulty as your LO gets comfortable with the activity.
These are just a few examples of the many visual discrimination exercises you can incorporate into your everyday activities! Here’s why developing Visual Discrimination skills are important:
1. To be able to read, children need to distinguish between the various symbols that comprise written language; and recognize distinct characteristics of each symbol.
2. Additionally, as children become more familiar with written language, they will become aware that words are groups of letters separated by spaces. They must then notice that letters are different than numerals. They would also need to learn the phonics sounds and names of the letters (uppercase and lowercase) and numerals 0-9.
3. While adults do these with ease, it may require a great deal of concentration for your LO to recognize and name the letter E without confusing it for the letter F. There are very slight differences in many letters (b, d and p for example) and numerals (6 and 9 or 2 and 5), so it is important for children to have finely developed visual discrimination skills to enable them recognize and remember these differences – with ease.
Once your child realizes the importance of looking closely at things around him, you’ll be surprised how sharp and observant those little eyes can be!
What Activities do you engage your LO in to build visual discrimination skills? Have you noticed your LOs slight confusion in identifying similar letters or numerals? Let's discuss.
Love & Light,
Oby O.
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