Hand-Eye Coordination is the physiological relationship between vision and action. It is the result of a well trained sense of proprioception, or the sense of where your limbs are.
Why it’s important:
Without hand-eye coordination, humans would not be able to do the simplest tasks. Fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination are some of the most heavily developed physical skills of children today. Video games, text messaging and typing on the computer have honed in on these skills.
Hand-eye coordination in terms to proprioception, that is, building a greater awareness of where your limbs are at any given time, is a skill that can be taught on the playground. Total body awareness is an important part of childhood development . It is a building block that prepares children to excel in every new physical skill they learn.
Playground Components that help:
Wall climbers, overheads, climbers and panels develop hand-eye coordination as it relates to total body awareness.
Wall Climbers
Wall climbers, specifically the Rock Wall Climbers, provide an opportunity to develop cognitive reasoning and hand-eye coordination. Similar to the rock walls used by adults, our Rock Wall Climbers have variously shaped hand holds that require a child to use different grips than they may be accustomed to. As the walls are scaled, the decision on what hand hold to grip and how to grip constantly reinforces hand-eye coordination development.
Overheads
Overheads are excellent components to improve several aspects of physical fitness, including hand-eye coordination. A child must view the next rung and swing in to grab it. Any mistake in the process will cause the child slow the momentum, making the trek more difficult. If the hand-eye coordination is very underdeveloped, the child may miss the rung altogether and have to begin anew.
Climbers
All School Daz, Inc. climbers enhance hand-eye coordination much like they enhance proprioception. Climbers do not require the same level of hand-eye coordination as the Rock Wall Climbers or overheads. Because climbers are used to get to another play component, children are more likely to focus on that next goal. This means that the body must adjust and have a clear understanding of where each limb is. This is proprioception, a key ingredient in the development of sound hand-eye coordination.
Panels
Panels afford children the opportunity to develop hand-eye coordination in a more traditional sense. Interactive panels, like the Tic-Tac-Toe Panel, let children engage in less strenuous activity while still increasing their fitness level and keeping them in the playground environment. One of the benefits of our interactive panels is that they are large. Most hand-eye coordination centers around fine motor skills, like playing a video game. Large panels encourage larger movements and a better sense of total body awareness.
