Hand Eye Coordination Exercises
Hand eye coordination involves doing activities that involve your hands and eyes working together. Throwing a ball, threading a needle and drawing pictures are all activities that require some degree of hand eye coordination. The majority of this skill is developed when we are young and in school. Once you are older it is much harder to improve or change the level of coordination that we have but it is possible. There are many things that can be done to improve your level of hand eye coordination.
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Drills
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There are many drills that are done with a ball that greatly improve hand eye coordination. Have someone throw a ball and you play goalie. The only condition is that you must stop the ball using your hands only. Have the person move closer to you or further away for different levels of challenge. Another good exercise is to take a softball or large whiffle ball and write letters on the ball. Play catch with someone and call out the last letter that you see right before you catch the ball. If you do not have a partner to play ball with, throw the ball up into the air and catch it as it comes down. This works with any ball.
Video Games
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Individuals that are good at video games usually have very good hand eye coordination. Playing video games, especially fast paced games such as shooting games, help to improve visual perception and fine motor skills. Those who play action games pick up on activities that are surrounding them. Video games can help individuals who need to pick out activities around them and are generally faster to respond to those situations. For example, when driving down the road, they may pick out a child running into the street after a ball faster than nongamers.
Tracing shapes
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Another good exercise to do to help improve hand eye coordination is with tracing shapes. School age children in lower elementary grades often bring home sheets of shapes that they must trace. These activities are done to improve their hand eye coordination and fine motor skills. There are places online that allow you to trace several shapes in an environment similar to a white board. A good one to try is online at http://www.bangor.ac.uk/~mas009/neurogym/exercises/handeye.htm.
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