Visual tracking is a skill that allows you to move your eyes around and follow a specific item. For adults, this is second nature and you probably don’t think about how this process develops in children. You might not realize it but visual tracking doesn’t actually develop fully until around age 5 and you should focus on helping your child to develop this skill. Read on to find out why it’s so important and how you can help your child improve their visual tracking skills.

Why Is Visual Tracking So Important?
Visual tracking impacts a lot of different activities that your child engages in every single day. When learning to read, it’s important for children to be able to track words with their eyes in order to make sense of what they are reading. If your child struggles with visual tracking, it may make learning to read harder.
Visual tracking also helps with playing sports, following an object that is moving, and with focusing on small objects. As you can see, visual tracking is important for a wide range of activities that are commonly performed by children every day. If they don’t develop their visual tracking skills properly when they are young, your child can run into a lot of problems later in life as it has a big knock-on effect on their overall development.
It is important to look out for the common signs of poor visual tracking skills in your child. These signs can include the following:
- Difficulty holding their gaze for a prolonged period of time
- Frequently losing track of an object while playing with it
- Struggles to follow objects when they move, especially if they are moving quite rapidly
- Finds it difficult to focus on small details like watching television or reading a book
If your child is struggling in any of these areas, then you should take steps to address the issue. As you know, children learn best when they have fun and engaging activities that help them improve their skills. If you just try to force them to do boring exercises, you will struggle to get them interested in improving their visual tracking. The good news is, there are some simple things you can do every day to help young children develop their visual tracking skills.
Drawing And Painting
This is a simple activity that you can do with your child at home but it has a lot of benefits. All you need is paper and some crayons and pens and it’s great fun. Drawing lines, shapes, squares, circles, etc., will help your child work on their motor control while improving their visual tracking skills. It’s also a good way to get their creative juices flowing and develop those skills at those times.
In order to get the most out of this activity, try setting your child challenges. Getting them to draw certain items around the room teaches them to improve observation and visual tracking even further because they have to pay close attention to the lines of the object.
Tracing Pictures
Tracing things can be a little tricky because the paper may move as you go to trace over certain parts of it. For this reason, it’s important to start with simple shapes and objects so your child can get the hang of how exactly to do this activity without much difficulty. Once they have mastered tracing large shapes, you can start working on more detailed pictures that include lots of different lines and curves to help improve their visual tracking skills even further.
This is a very useful technique for parents who would like to teach their children how to draw or paint at home. You can create your own picture by drawing a basic outline first and then inviting your child to fill in the gaps with colored pens or pencils to make what they want.
Ball Games
Another fun, hands-on game that you can play with your child is throwing a ball over their head and seeing if they can catch it before it hits the ground. You should definitely use soft balls to avoid hurting them! This game helps your child improve their motor control and visual tracking by teaching them how to keep their eyes on where the ball is going while moving their body in position to catch it.
This game also helps build up your child’s visual tracking skills because they need to pay close attention to where the ball is flying through the air so that they know when and where to move in order to catch it. Try coming up with different variations of this activity as well, for example, aiming at targets or running around obstacles instead of standing still in one spot.
Ball sports are particularly good, even if your child is just watching them. Something like ping pong is perfect because they can follow the short, sharp movements of the ball going back and forth. Playing ball games on a regular basis will help your child get a bit of exercise and improve their visual tracking skills at the same time.
Bubble Machines
Bubble machines are becoming increasingly popular, and there’s a good reason for this. One of the best benefits is that they can help promote visual tracking skills by teaching children how to keep their eyes on a moving object. Using a bubble machine is the perfect way to get younger kids to start practicing these skills. It’s also great fun to play with too!
Jigsaw Puzzles
Jigsaw puzzles are good for your child’s brain in general, but they can also help develop visual tracking skills. You need to focus really hard when you’re trying to piece together jigsaw puzzles and this helps improve your child’s ability to concentrate on tasks. Finding the right pieces in the pile requires advanced visual tracking skills to scan through a lot of different intricate designs and pick out specific things. So, regular puzzles are great for improving visual tracking skills.
Video Games
Video games get a bad reputation sometimes and a lot of people say that they’re a waste of time for kids. However, they can actually be very good for their development. Video games require good visual tracking skills, and the more your child plays them, the better their skills will get. There are lots of different kinds of video games to choose from as well, so you can find one that best suits your child’s interests, and then they’ll be happy playing it because it’s something they like to do anyway.
On top of visual tracking skills, video games also improve puzzle-solving and critical thinking, which are equally as important. Collections like 51 Clubhouse Games have lots of great classic puzzle games with lots of moving parts, which are perfect for developing a range of skills in your child. However, it is important that you limit screen time, so don’t rely on video games too much.
Guided Reading
If you want to teach your child how to read, guided reading is a great way to do it. Reading out loud helps children learn about different sounds and words. Guided reading will help them develop good visual tracking skills at the same time because they’ll be looking closely at the text on the pages of books, following along while you’re reading, and paying attention to what’s happening in each sentence.
Visual tracking isn’t an easy skill to learn, but kids are more likely to pick up certain abilities if they’re introduced through fun games that are enjoyable for them. So try using some of these tips when playing with your kids and seeing if it has any effect on their visual tracking skills.