Hello, readers. Happy Friday! If you remember, last week we talked about peripheral stability. As promised, here are some fun peripheral awareness exercises for home!
A couple of weeks ago I discussed building up the vestibular system. One of the exercises I mentioned was reading a letter chart while tossing a beanbag from your right to left hand and back again. This exercise is also great for your peripheral vision! Because you’re reading the letter chart, your central vision will be fixed straight ahead. This means that you will have to rely on your peripheral vision to get the beanbag back and forth. You can also use scarves (or a balloon) in place of beanbags to start, since the beanbags fall faster and will be more difficult.
Thanks to a fellow vision therapist, I have been doing a lot peripheral taps lately! They are a great easy home exercise. They note:
“Peripheral Taps
1. Place your finger tips near your body facing the student
2. Without taking their eyes off of you (I put a stick on my nose for children to focus on), have the student tap your fingers with his/her finger tips.
3. Alternate hands and places around the face.”
Another awesome activity (that works on tracking AND peripheral vision) that I found is described in the following video. This activity would be easy to create at home, and is fun and engaging! Using regular flashlight is just fine.
As Dr. Julie mentioned when children or adults block out peripheral vision which then creates a tunnel vision effect it can cause loss of concentration and/or difficulty driving.
These are fun, easy home exercises to do at home that will greatly improve your peripheral vision. Try them out and let us know how it goes!