Enhancing Visual Perception

Proud to Read 4Visual perception is the brain’s ability to make sense of the things we see. It helps us interpret visual information. Down the line it enhances children’s ability to learn to read.

Children develop visual perception skills while they explore their environments:

  • Looking for details, discovering colours, shapes and patterns, spotting similarities and differences in the objects and things in the world around them.
  • Building puzzles, playing with toys children can take apart and put together again.
  • Watching plants grow from seed, discovering where bugs live and how they move, collecting different leaves, admiring the colour of fresh food and vegetables, chasing bubbles in the garden.

Promoting Visual Perception

When we encourage children to link all the visual clues to language and actions, we are also helping our young explorers, develop:

  • Good memory skills. It is so much easier to remember something we can visualise
  • Strong hand-eye coordination skills
  • Visual tracking skills, strengthening all the muscles that enhance eye movements to the left, right, up or down, allowing the eyesight to do its job of taking in everything we see.

These skills enhance reading readiness. When the time comes children can naturally apply these skills in their reading and writing.

Visual Perception Skills

Bubbles are funAs children grow and develop, they hone various visual perception skills that will help them read.

A Look Ahead

Visual motor integration is the ability to combine all of the information we receive visually with motor skills for hand-eye coordination essential for handwriting, copying, drawing and writing.

Visual sequencing is the ability to see things in the correct order, vitally important for reading and writing.

Visual memory is the ability to recall and remember what we have just seen, which is so important to developing good comprehension skills.

Visual discrimination is the ability to see the differences between two similar objects, two shades of the same colour, similar letters, and words. It enhances our ability to discriminate between b and d, u and v, p and q, words like ‘stitch’ and ‘stretch’. It also enhances fluency, our ability to sound out accurately and speedily when reading.

Debbie de Jong, ‘Detecting Molehills before they become Mountains’, workshop for early childhood educators, Johannesburg, 2007