August is Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month. As kids head back to school, we can help raise awareness of children’s vision and eye health.  Healthy vision contributes to children’s school readiness, ability to learn, and overall healthy development. The importance of early detection of vision conditions with screening and eye care are essential.

Eye Exercises for Kids

Memory games: The purpose of these games is to increase your child’s visual memory. In most games of this nature, a picture is shown briefly, and then the participant must try to remember as much about the picture as possible. The more you can recall, the better!

Eye shift exercise: It is really important for children to learn to shift their eyes quickly between objects at different distances. One exercise to help with shifting vision involves a pencil and a calendar. Place a calendar on the wall and have your child stand at least 10 feet away while holding a pencil vertically in front of his/her face.

Instruct your child to focus on the pencil, and then to look at the numbers on the calendar. Then, have the child look back at the pencil. Repeat this at least 10 times.

Rotating exercise: This one is really simple! Instruct your child to rotate his/her eyes in a clockwise motion. After completing one full circle, your child should blink and then proceed to rotate his/her eyes in a counter-clockwise motion. Repeat several times, making sure they are blinking in between.