Greetings!
As long as jolly old Santa keeps coming back every year, we’ll keep producing our annual Vision-Friendly Holiday Gift List. This year the list includes 96 toys and games that promote visual skills such as hand-eye coordination, visualization, and space perception.
Part of the tradition surrounding the Vision-Friendly Holiday Gift List is to feature toys and games apart from hand-held video devices and home gaming systems, which can increase the risk of computer eye-strain.
We know we’re swimming against the stream on this one, but these alternatives to the electronic games can enhance a child’s visual skills, contributing to improvements in hand-eye coordination, depth perception, visualization, fine motor skills and other visual skills.
Excessive amounts of time on hand-held video devices and home gaming systems could potentially contribute to worsening functional vision problems such as focusing issues, poor eye teaming and even nearsightedness.
In particular, we want people who have a child with an existing functional vision problem to give wisely this year.
Choose toys geared to a child’s developmental age, rather than their actual age. Learning and enjoyment is usually best when the child can accomplish the activity relatively easily about 80-90% of the time, and is therefore challenged 10-20% of the time. Consider playing without being competitive.
Once again, the 2014 Vision-Friendly Gift List is arranged by visual skill and includes ideas for pre-schoolers through adults. New additions are in bold.
Building toys – Develop eye-hand coordination and visualization/imagination.
1. Kreo Sets
2. Megabloks
3. Knex
4. Building Blocks
5. Legos/Duplos
6. Lincoln Logs
7. Tinker Toys
8. Erector Set
Fine motor skill toys – Develop fine motor skills including visual skills and manual eye-hand coordination.
9. Origami Sets
10. Rainbow Loom
11. Light Bright
12. Pegboard and Pegs
13. Coloring Books and Crayons
14. Dot-to-Dot Activity Books
15. Finger Paints
16. Playdough/Silly Putty/Modeling Clay
17. Chalkboard (24″ x 36″)/Easel
18. Bead Stringing
19. Sewing Cards (craft)
20. Paint or Color By Numbers
21. Sand Art
22. Stencils
23. Bead Craft Kits
24. Models (car, airplane, ships, etc.)
25. Jacks
Space perception toys – Develop depth perception and eye-hand coordination.
Within arm’s length:
26. Egg and Spoon Race
27. Jumpin’ Monkeys
28. Flippin’ Frogs
29. Ants in the Pants
30. Fishin’ Around
31. Operation
32. Pick-up Sticks
33. KerPlunk
34. Jenga
35. Don’t Break the Ice
36. Marbles
Beyond arm’s length:
37. Bowling Zombies
38. Oball (good for kids who aren’t very good at catching)
39. Ball (any kind!)
40. Pitchback
41. Toss Across (tic-tac-toe)
42. Ring Toss
43. Nerf Basketball
44. Dart Games (velcro)
45. Ping Pong
46. Cuponk
47. Elefun
Visual thinking toys and games – Develop visual thinking including visualization, visual memory, form perception, pattern recognition, sequencing and eye tracking skills. These skills are important basics for academics including mathematics, reading and spelling.
48. Color Code
49. Math Dice, Math Dice Jr.
50. Rory’s Story Cubes
51. Amaze
52. Color Blocks and 1″ Cubes
53. Bejeweled Board Game
54. Tetris Bop it
55. Parquetry Blocks
56. Attribute Blocks
57. Make N Break Game
58. Jigsaw Puzzles
59. Rory’s Story Cubes
60. Card Games (Old Maid, Go Fish, etc.)
61. Dominoes
62. ThinkFun Bug Trails
63. Checkers
64. Chinese Checkers
65. Perplexus
66. Qwirkle
67. Battleship
68. Labyrinth
69. Blokus
70. Connect Four
71. Rush Hour/Rush Hour Jr.
72. Regatta
73. Perfection
74. Tactilo
75. Bingo
76. Memory Games
77. Chicken Cha-Cha-Cha
78. Simon Flash
79. Bop It
80. Hyperdash
81. Blink
82. Set
83. Loopz
84. Racko
85. Sort it Out
86. Tangrams/Tangoes
87. Mancala
88. Q-bitz
Balance and Coordination toys and games – Develop large motor skills.
89. Heads Up
90. Hoppity Hop
91. Jump Ropes
92. Sit and Spin
93. Slip ‘n Slide
94. Trampoline
95. Stilts
96. Twister
Source: http://www.thevisiontherapycenter.com/