Improving Kids' Hand-Eye Coordination

There is a fundamental capability, a unique combination of perceptual-motor skills, that allows babies to hold a finger outstretched to them or children to copy what is written on the board into notebooks. This ability is called hand-eye coordination.

If hand and eye coordination is improved starting from early childhood, it makes a great contribution to the perfection of both simple and complex activities.

In this blog, you will find information about the importance of hand-eye coordination for children and how it can be improved effectively.

What Is Hand-Eye Coordination?

Hand-eye coordination is the capability of performing instant hand movements using the ability to process information perceived by the eye movements. It may sound simple since we use this skill automatically in our daily lives. However, simultaneously controlling your eyes and hands requires a complex cognitive process.

From infancy to adulthood, we coordinate our vision with our fine and gross motor skills when grasping objects, writing, painting, doing sports, and even eating. This basic capability, which can be improved with MentalUP’s educational games for your child, can increase the quality of all activities in their adulthood.

Why Is Hand-Eye Coordination Important?

Underdeveloped hand-eye coordination can cause children to lose their potential to be great athletes or artists. It may limit academic achievement, create balancing issues, cause car accidents, or simply make daily activities, such as unlocking a door, very difficult.

Moreover, if hand-eye coordination is not improved in its natural pattern, it can delay every growth step on the way from infancy to adulthood.

For this reason, families should regularly check whether their children can improve their hand-eye coordination to an age-appropriate level.

How Can You Measure and Assess Hand-Eye Coordination?

It is not always easy to tell if your child has good hand-eye coordination by observing simple daily movements. Generally, weakness or superiority in hand-eye coordination is detected in complex academic, artistic, or sporting activities.

It is very important for parents to closely follow the development of their children in academic, sports, and artistic activities and to benefit from the observations of their child’s teachers.

Monitoring the performance of children with fitness apps for kids, such as MentalUP’s physical games that include stretching and balance exercises, can play a huge role in determining their hand-eye coordination level.

The brain games offered by MentalUP also require the use of hand-eye coordination. These games provide great benefits for the improvement and measurement of kids’ hand-eye coordination.

In addition, you can benefit from tests or activities specifically prepared to measure your child’s coordination capability.

Eye-Hand Coordination Development Milestones for Kids

As children grow, the development of hand-eye coordination naturally progresses to advanced stages. This improvement is also affected by the level of development of gross and fine motor skills.

5 Months Old	Children begin to grasp and shake objects. They can even move these objects between their hands.
1 Year Olds	They start holding objects between the thumb and first finger. In this way, they become able to collect small objects.
1 to 3 Year Olds	During this period, children begin to give meaning to the concepts of up and down. They can hold food utensils, and while parents are dressing them, they can perform basic hand movements.
3 to 5 Year Olds	This is a period in which children understand directions with much more detailed expressions, such as “behind” and “in front of.” They begin to perform activities such as pushing, pulling, running, and jumping.
5 Year Olds and After	During this period, children begin to write letters, paint certain areas, and show full performance in various sports activities. In a short time, they become able to do all their schoolwork and daily activities.

How to Improve Hand-Eye Coordination of Your Kid

Depending on your child's age, hand-eye coordination will develop naturally to a certain extent. However, it is always possible to improve your coordination significantly with eye-hand coordination activities.

Here are coordination exercises that your child can do to improve hand-eye coordination, classified by age group.

Coordination Activities and Games for Kids

Babies	Let them rub their fingers on your face and make different expressions while doing it. Place noisy toys that excite them within their reach. Gamify finger movements so you can make them imitate. Roll a ball and make them watch the ball.
Toddlers & Preschoolers	Make them do activities such as coloring or drawing shapes. Have them do puzzles suitable for their age level. Play hand-eye coordination games like throwing bean bags into the rings or throwing and catching balls. Make them roll or hit a ball to knock over objects. Have them string beads. Let them paint their fingers.
Grade Schoolers & Teens	Make them bounce a tennis ball against a wall. Encourage them to do sports like swimming or tennis. Let them do juggling or magic tricks. Let them play with darts. Teach them hopscotch. Let them play video games that are entertaining and educational.

MentalUP Is Here to Help!

According to the University Of Toronto, playing video games helps people learn new sensorimotor skills more quickly. But when it comes to children, these games need to be scientific and educational, as well as entertaining.

If you want your children to learn while improving, you can check out MentalUP's certified child development and hand eye coordination games.