News And Events

Catching Throwing and Kicking

Catching, throwing and kicking are skills necessary for sports skills but also necessary for mastering the skills of writing, reading, rhythm and timing along with the ability to judge speed, distance and direction.

Hand-eye coordination is the ability of the vision system to co-ordinate the information received through the eyes to control, guide and direct the hands to accomplish a task such as writing or catching a ball. Hand-eye co-ordination uses the eyes to direct attention and the hands to execute a task.  The same could be said for foot-eye coordination.

It is important we expose children to many different activities that will help develop these specific skills.  Using their feet/hands and eyes are an important part of a child’s development, and ball handling skills also develop an awareness of preferred hand and foot.

Practical ideas for developing eye/hand/foot co-ordination:

• Lie baby on his tummy and roll a toy in front of his eyes, across and toward and away – not only encourages eye movements but also upper body strength
• Use finger puppets, play finger games like ‘two little dicky birds”
• Give children sticks or rulers and ask them to catch bubbles on them
• Use balloons and fly swats; hit the balloon up and down
• Play skittles
• Tell make believe stories without pictures; let them use their imagination and talk about what they thought of and did
• Place a ball in a plastic bag and hang it from a hook – use a football for kicking practise or a smaller ball for hitting
• You can also use it as a wrecking ball with skittles!
• Feathers are great—allow them to fall down over your baby or older children can throw them up in the air (hands, on head, on foot etc)

Acknowledgement:

Taken from article written by Kirsty Carling, Early Childhood Advisor with Sport Bay of Plenty