As an occupational therapist, I use visual perceptual activities very frequently. They are great for children’s developing brains! These 42 visual perceptual activities support all of the components of visual perception. Visual perception creates a good foundation for learning in ALL children of various ages.
Many of the students that I work with during occupational therapy sessions need practice with visual processing, visual motor skills, and visual perception.
I also frequently help many regular education teachers ensure that they add visual perception activities for all of their students.
Visual perception supports so many skills needed for learning and everyday tasks.
What is Visual Perception?
Visual perception is the brain’s ability to interpret what the eyes see.
The eye muscles need to be strong to support oculomotor control. Vision (seeing) just by itself, requires many skills and abilities:
- Focusing on objects up close
- Scanning the environment using the eye muscles
- Taking in info from all fields of vision
- Coordinating the eye muscles to work together
- Seeing and focusing on objects far away
- Adjusting to objects that are moving toward or away from the eyes
- Filtering light and adjusting to light
- Following moving objects with the eyes
- Focusing on objects while the body is moving
- Visually sustaining attention to objects and the environment
The eyes have such an important role but so does the brain!
As the eyes constantly look, attend, and take in information, the brain has to make sense of what it sees.
The brain processes, perceives, and interprets what the eyes see. This is visual perception.
Visual perceptual skills rely on the brain’s cognitive abilities. A child has to remember and organize previous visual info. Then, it can automatically make sense of everything seen.
Many other systems play a role in supporting the visual system and visual perception.
Various postural muscle groups and the movement / balance (vestibular) system help support visual skills.
The sensory systems and sensory processing helps support the attention centers needed for the visual system. In order to effectively take in info, the eyes need to focus and attend well. But, at the same time, they have to ignore unnecessary visual info.
The brain’s job of actually making sense of what the eyes see (visual perception) is very complex! This post focuses on the seven different visual perceptual skills that children need.
Why Are Visual Perceptual Activities from an Occupational Therapist Important for Kids?
Visual perceptual activities support learning and cognition. They start to develop in babies and continue to develop and become refined throughout elementary school years.
Visual perceptual skills are one of the important building blocks for the brain and for many academic subjects.
(The pyramid of learning shows all of the building blocks for attending, behaving, and learning.)
Visual perception skills are essential parts of early learning in babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. But they continue to be vital for school-age students to help with math, reading, spelling, writing, science, social studies, art, music, and library.
They also support helping children stay organized and manage school materials.
If a child is having difficulty with any of the different areas of visual perception, they can easily become frustrated. Frustration leads to a dislike of school, a low confidence level, potential behavior challenges, and even anxiety.
Increasing numbers of children are experiencing these difficulties.
As a school based occupational therapist, I’ve worked with many kids who need support with visual perception. However, I’m seeing more and more students in general education who are having trouble with these developmental skills in one or more of the component areas.
I’m finding myself frequently sharing visual perceptual activities with all teachers so that all of the students have practice with them. I offer sequences of activities for little toddlers up to third and fourth graders.
What Are the Components of Visual Perceptual Skills in Occupational Therapy and How do They Impact Learning?
The seven components of visual perception that I look at in occupational therapy are: visual discrimination, visual memory, spatial relationships, form constancy, sequential memory, visual figure-ground, and visual closure.
Each area is explained below. Additionally, visual perception examples are given for each area, showing how the components are part functional tasks during learning.
Visual Discrimination
Visual discrimination is the ability to tell the difference between objects or to tell the subtle differences between the details of objects. It involves recognizing what’s the same and what’s different. This helps with matching and categorizing.
This skill is used when recognizing the difference between shapes and letters such as b-d, p-q, p-9, 5-s, etc. It’s used when kids recognize the difference between similar looking words.
Additionally, it’s used when telling the difference between leaves or shapes of states or countries.
Visual Memory
Visual memory is remembering an object and the characteristics of an object after it’s out of sight. Kids need to retain visual information for immediate recall, or for later retrieval.
This skill is used for learning shapes, letters, numbers, sight words, fact families, maps, patterns, etc.
It’s used when practicing letter formation without a model and when drawing a picture without a model. Or, when writing a descriptive story about an object or a picture.
Visual Spatial Relationships
Visual spatial relationships are the skills involving the ability to recognize and understand the physical relationships between objects. It’s knowing the position of an object in space.
The development of position in space is complete between ages 7 and 9. Spatial relationships improves up to age 10.
This is an important skill in understanding directional concepts (left, right, between, under, down, etc.)
Kids need this skill during prewriting and writing. It’s crucial when forming shapes and during letter formation and number formation. (Especially ones with angles and curves.)
Visual spatial skills are used when writing words and sentences with the correct letter size (tall letters, short letters, or letters that hang below the line.) Additionally, the words have to be placed correctly on the writing lines which requires visual motor integration.
Spatial skills help with letter and word spacing (understanding the proper space between words and keeping letters within a word close together.) Children also need to process and understand margin sizes and space around the written work.
Kids use spatial skills when organizing their math problems on paper (with or without lines.) They use it when figuring out maps, measurements, distance, patterns, and geometry.
Form Constancy
Form constancy is knowing that an object or form is the same no matter its size or what position it’s in. This helps kids understand consistency of objects.
This skill improves between ages 6 and 7, and continues to develop until age 9.
When developing form constancy, kids understand that an A is always an A, regardless of font or writing style (printed, italicized, bolded, uppercase, lowercase, etc.)
Children are able to form letters or words without reversing.
Additionally, form constancy involves looking at an object from a different angle but still knowing what the object is. The brain can look at an upside down A across a table on another person’s paper, and still understand that it’s an A because the position of the body is different.
A picture of a world map on the wall is the same as a picture on paper in front of them. They understand that it’s the same, even though the wall map is much larger, and maybe even at a different angle.
Visual Sequential Memory
Visual sequential memory is remembering the correct order, series, or sequence of visual items. Young children develop this when driving in a car on a routine drive to or from a store. They start to remember what they see, what’s next, and eventually the sequence of the drive.
This is extremely important for spelling, reading, and copying short text. It’s useful when remembering the sequence of a visual story. Or, when following written directions to complete a multiple-step task.
As kids get older, they have to remember longer words or a series of words when copying text from a book or from the board. It’s also used when remembering the correct order of equations and formulas (or phone numbers.)
Visual Figure-Ground
Visual figure ground is the ability to visually locate an object in a busy background. It’s differentiating the foreground from background.
This skill continues to develop in kids between ages 6 and 7.
Young children can find a favorite figurine laying on top of toys on a patterned carpet.
It’s noticing an object, word, or letter with added visual input behind it. Such as on a busy worksheet.
Another example would be a child’s ability to locate a blue pencil on a blue marbled carpet. Or, to find a math equation, part of an animal’s life cycle, or the outline of a state in a pile of others.
Visual Closure
Visual closure is the ability to know what an object or picture is, when only presented with parts of it.
This would be recognizing part of a homework page when most of it is covered up by a notebook. It’s also knowing what a picture is, if only given parts of it (a partially completed puzzle or a dot to dot picture that’s only partly finished.)
It’s seeing an outline of a leaf that has been erased in many areas. Even though all of the lines of the leaf are not complete, the brain can fill in the rest of the parts to identify it.
This is important when kids start to learn to read faster. They don’t have to look at every single letter of a word, or even at every single word.
42 Important Visual Perceptual Activities for Kids
Examples of my favorite visual perceptual activities that I use in occupational therapy are listed below. They’re organized in each of the 7 areas previously mentioned.
I’ve only listed an activity once (under each category.) However, some activities and games address more areas of visual perception than the one they’re listed under. (I chose the most relevant component area that the activity focuses on.)
If you want to start with the basics, there are simple ways to work on the foundation for visual perception during daily routines (visual tracking, visual attention, etc.) The following list gives specific examples of games and activities that support each component of visual perception:
Visual Discrimination Activities
- Matching complex shapes to outlines (Perfection)
- Dice games
- Sorting coins
- Dominoes
- “What’s Different?” Or “Find the Difference” Games
- Sort items by shape or size
Fun Visual Memory Activities
- Memory games
- What’s Missing? games
- Study the picture
- Word searches
- Line Up
- Concentration
Visual Spatial Relationships Activities
- Copy designs using pencils, pennies, small erasers, etc
- Geoboard patterns and designs
- Traffic Jam game
- How to Draw books
- Directionality games
- Proprioceptive activities (to improve body awareness)
Cool Visual Form Constancy Activities
- Spot It
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Tangrams
- Parquetry blocks
- Building sets
- Type spelling words using different fonts
Visual Sequential Memory Activities
- Scrabble
- Hangman
- Crossword puzzles
- Sequence game
- Copy patterns (make a pattern, cover it up and have child re-create)
- Stringing beads in a specific sequence or to spell non-sense words
Easy Visual Figure-Ground Activities
- I Spy
- Hidden Pictures
- Sensory Bins with Letters (to build words)
- Shredded paper with letters or words on other paper scraps (to build sentences)
- Crafts with small beads
- Jigsaw puzzles (also great for visual closure)
Visual Closure Activities
- Partly cover up complex shapes before matching to the outline
- Word shapes activities (match the word to the outline)
- Match pictures to incomplete pictures
- Scavenger hunts (partly hidden learning items)
- Dot-to-dots (identify picture before connecting dots)
- Erase parts of pictures or words for a guessing game
To find many of these toys, games, and activities, check out the recommendations in the following posts organized by age. You’ll find them under the in the visual section on each article:
- 101 Occupational Therapy Sensory Toys for School-Age Children
- Sensory Systems and Learning – 54 Toys for Preschool Kids
- Top 84 Sensory Toys for Toddlers and Babies
Hopefully this gives you a variety of activities to help your kiddos! Pin this on Pinterest so others can find it! Check out similar posts below.
For More Information on Visual Skills…
- How to Improve Reading with 15+ Visual Skills Activities – Support visual perception with these fun games and activities.
- Best Educational Toys and Games for Kids (Ages 5-10) – Several games and toys on this post support visual perceptual skill development.
- An Easy Visual Motor Activity Using Magnets – This is a kid favorite activity; so fun and easy to supplement many learning skills.
