Ocular Motor Activities to Do at Home

Introduction to Ocular Motor Skills:

What are ocular motor skills?

Ocular motor skills are essentially one or both of your eye's ability to work together to locate and fixate on stable or moving objects within the line of sight. Ocular motor skills result in the eye's ability to move together in smooth, coordinated movements to track and/or focus on objects.

Why are ocular motor skills important?

We use ocular motor skills every time we use our eyes. Some specific activities that require ocular motor skills include reading, catching/throwing a ball, building Legos, doing puzzles, handwriting, typing etc.

Ocular Motor Activities:

Saccades

• Have someone hold two different colored pencils/markers an arms-length distance away from the nose and about 10-12 inches apart next to each other and behind/in front of one another.

• "Jump" from one pencil to the other using the eyes

• For example, the person holding the pencils says "red" "green" "red" "green" "red" "red" "green" "green" etc.

Eye Gaze Stabilization

• Have someone hold a pencil an arms-length distance away from the nose

• Move head and not eyes while focusing on pencil

• Nod head

• Shake head

• Gradually get faster

Tracking/Smooth Pursuits

• Have someone hold a pencil an arms-length distance away from the nose

• Follow a pen with only eyes and without head moving

• Make an X

• Make an H

• Make a capital i

• Videos from Youtube:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JTOIW7pfuU Visual Tracking Exercises 2 Visual Tracking Exercises with high contrast images.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDx8Vxn8nHU Visual Tracking Exercises 1 A series of visual tracking exercises.

Convergence

• Bring a pen close to the nose and away from the nose to make eyes cross and uncross

• Notice when the pen becomes two instead of one

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