Why Is Hand-Eye Coordination Important?

Good eye-hand coordination can help your child in so many different areas of life. Here are just a few:

Sports: Hand-eye coordination can help your child to catch a ball, and to hit a ball with a bat, and then graduate to more challenging sporting demands.

Handwriting: Visual-motor integration, which is a vital base for handwriting, grows out of eye-hand coordination. The eyes need to guide the hand in forming the letters and making sure they stay within the lines.

Reading: Eye tracking skills, which are vital for reading, can be developed through the games and activities used for hand eye coordination.

Life Skills: Children use this skill in learning to stack towers, build with lego etc. We also need our eyes to guide our hands when we tie shoelaces and when we frost cakes!

Suspended Ball Activities

Do yourself a huge favor and suspend a ball in a net. It will save you from chasing after countless missed balls while your kids practice their skills! Use a net bag, the kind that you get fruit and veggies in.

Here's what to do:

• Pop a ball in and knot it.
• Tie it to a length of rope.
• The rope needs to be long enough to get the ball level with your child’s chest.
• Suspend the ball from any horizontal pole or even from a hook in a doorway.

Now try these suggestions:

Push and Catch: Have your child push the ball away with both hands and then catch it again. Your child needs to watch the ball carefully to catch it with both hands together, and to not let it bang against the body.

Bat and Ball: Use a bat and have your child practice hitting the ball with the bat. Use a variety of bats to increase the challenge for your child.