Why can’t my child see the difference? Why is he constantly so careless in his work and missing out on important details? Why does he make careless mistakes in his assignments? In modern day terms, most parents would assume that their child is careless.
More often than not, we focus on the aftermath, which is the red markings on the papers and schoolwork.
What are the reasons? Are our children simply careless, or is there more underlying reasons?
Visual skills are important as it can affect an individual’s ability to excel in reading, learning, sports, and in day-to-day activities. We will be touching on one component: Visual Discrimination.
Visual discrimination is a component of visual skills. It is the ability of the individual to distinguish and identify subtle differences, be it in words, shapes, size or patterns or colours. Another easier explanation is how attentive an individual is to details.
Continue reading My Child is Careless – Visual Skills (Visual Discrimination)
I’m sure most of us have heard of our eyes being the window to our soul. But did you also know that our eyes are the window to learning? 80% of a child’s learning comes through the eyes (Prairie Vision Center, n.d.). That is to say, the majority of us learn by looking.
Reading is a task that relies heavily on visual skills. Children would need good visual skills to be able to read though a long passage at the same time understanding the information presented.
Answering Math questions relies on visual skills too. Being able to read 6 + 2 as 6 +2 and not 9 + 2 requires the ability to discriminate between numbers. Problem sums is an area in Math that requires the child to read and comprehend the question before being able to answer them. Many times, children dread this component because lack adequate visual skills.
Learning Chinese characters requires a great deal of visual skills to be able to discriminate between similar characters. To understand a Chinese passage and to answer comprehension questions accurately, the child has to first be equipped with visual skills that would help him/her “get pass” the chunk of Chinese words.
In Science, we learn to classify things around us. Classification can only take place when the child knows the properties or characteristics of the things. For example, reptiles are distinguished by their dry scaly skin while birds have feathers. Children have to see the skin textures to understand what “dry scaly skin” is like.
Suffice to say, visual skills are very important for learning.
Therefore, before we start drilling more books and such to improve reading skills, you might consider practicing visual skills.
We have compiled a list of activities and resources (found online) that would help to improve your child’s visual skills.
Activities
Resources
Hope you would find these useful!
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