Tips and Advice
Here is some information to help you understand how your child's sight develops.
For example, Did you know……, if a baby saw only horizontal
lines for the first two years, he/she would not have the ability to
see vertical lines in later life?
Babies need to learn to recognise dots, squares, horizontal and vertical
stripes. Therefore an ideal setting would expose an infant to each
of these.
- Research indicates some important visual developmental milestones
for infants
- At birth babies respond to light and dark. They respond
to black and white contrasts before they respond to colour contrasts
- Babies
can see black and white contrasts and strong contrasts of colour
- Babies are initially short sighted,
they can see up to one foot away
- Being held in the feeding position
is the perfect position to see a face!
- New born babies are particularly interested
in the contrast of a person’s hairline and shape of the face, rather than detail
- At 2 days the baby can
distinguish their mother’s face
from that of a stranger
- Babies are programmed from birth to follow anything with their eyes that moves in front of them. As the brain matures, eventually they will choose wether to look or not at the moving object.
- Babies will be interested
in looking at shapes and strong contrasts in colour
Activities
- Cut out the black and white shapes and patterns and stick them
on to some card (bright cards such as yellow is good). Start with
the bigger, simpler patterns from birth (see pictures a) and the
more complicated images from 6 weeks (see pictures b). Attach the
cards to your baby’s
crib or somewhere else visible
- Make mobiles using coat hangers from
which to hang black and white contrasts using black and white ribbon.
Cover the coat hangers with black or white ribbon as well for a nice
finish
- Black and white checkered mates may be placed on the floor
- Use different
textures such as felt, tissue paper, material, feathers to create
the visual stimulating environment
- Copy some black and white photographs of members of the family, especially mum and dad and make a picture for baby to see
