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The Best Visual Motor Activities Worksheets: A Comparison!
This page provides a comparison of my favorite visual motor activities worksheets for kids from preschool through early elementary. These are worksheets that I personally use with my own kids at home and in therapy situations, but each has a different purpose and design.
On this page, I explain the different types of visual motor challenge that worksheets can offer, so you know which ones will best meet your child's needs.
Activities Before Worksheets!
Before you start... have you done any other visual motor activities with your child?
Visual-motor integration is an important pre-skill for handwriting, but it cannot be developed just by doing visual motor activities worksheets.
Children need to develop visual motor skills through hands-on play and exploration BEFORE they do any worksheets or pencil-and-paper tasks.
Eye-hand coordination is another important skill that can help with visual-motor integration.
Developing eye-hand coordinationThere are so many simple, yet effective, activities that you can do with your child, and I really encourage you to check out these free activities on my site, first, before starting with any visual motor activities worksheets.
- visual motor activities for toddlers and preschoolers
- eye-hand coordination activities
- visual motor integration activities
In addition, if your child has poor pencil control, the worksheets on this page may be frustrating. However, you can ask your child to trace the lines and paths with a finger until fine motor skills improve.
Types of Visual Motor Activities Worksheets
Visual-motor integration is the skill of being able to use the eyes (visual system) to guide the movement of the hands (motor system). So all visual motor worksheets should give the child lots of practice in using information from the eyes to guide the hands in drawing a line, whether with a crayon, pencil or finger.
For ease of explanation, I am going to use the word "pencil", but please do feel free to have your child use a finger, marker, or other implement.
- First Difference: What Are They Practicing?
Visual motor activities worksheets can offer differ on whether they practice straight lines, curved lines, corners, patterns, shapes, numbers, letters and drawings.
- Worksheets for the youngest
children usually focus on straight lines which progress from horizontal
and vertical, to diagonal.
- Worksheets for older kids usually focus on handwriting patterns, letters, and more complicated drawings.
Visual motor worksheets provide a variety of practice - Second Difference: How Do They Practice It?
Visual motor activities worksheets can differ on whether they ask the child to trace a line, draw a line with guidance, or draw a line without guidance in order to develop visual motor skills.
1) Tracing A Line
Tracing over a line is a common activity in visual motor worksheets.
When tracing, the child needs to guide the pencil on
top of a given line, which may be a solid line, a dotted line or a faded
line.It could also involve tracing a shape.
Encourage your child to go slowly and to stay on the line all the way.
2) Drawing A Line With Guidance
Many visual motor worksheets require kids to draw inside a path. This path could be straight, it could have curves or corners or it could be a shape.
A path has two lines marking out the edge of the path, and the child needs to guide the pencil along the inside of the path, without straying over the marked edges.
Again, encourage your child to go slowly in order to stay on the path and not veer off.
Encourage your child to keep the shape of the path, ie to make sharp
corners when the path makes a sharp corner and to curve their line with
the curve of the path. If your child is very "wobbly" on a path, then take a break for a while and
try some eye-hand coordination games and hands-on visual motor
integration activities to strengthen these skills..
My personal experience is that drawing on a path (keeping between the
lines) requires more eye-hand coordination than tracing over a line, but many resources interchange the two methods.
3) Drawing A Line Without Guidance
These visual motor activities worksheets are much more challenging than tracing and paths.
Your child needs to discern the starting point and ending point of the line, and then guide the pencil to make the line or shape accurately, "free-hand" style.
For beginners, use worksheets where the starting and ending points are clearly marked, with a short distance between them. Start with simple straight lines, then graduate to longer distances, and curved lines, and lines with corners. Copying a pattern or a shape with no given starting point is the most challenging.
My favorite visual motor worksheets are coming right up...
The age categories below are just a guideline and there is some overlap between
resources, as each set of printables usually contains some easier and some more challenging visual motor activities worksheets.
Your child may be ahead or behind their peers, so start where they are at. If you are in any way concerned about your child's visual motor development, please consult an occupational therapist.
I
am an affiliate for Your Therapy Source, because I personally use their resources. If you decide to purchase one of their
e-books featured on this page, I will receive a small commission which helps support my site.
Clicking
on the "add to cart" buttons will take you to their cart where you can
complete the transaction. Have fun with their awesome products! Alternatively, view the full reviews of each e-book, and don't forget to check out the Discounted Bundle Deals at the end of this page!
Comparison of Preschool and Kindergarten Resources
Penguin Pencil Challenges
The Penguin Pencil Challenges are all paths
from one penguin to another.
The paths start from easy, short straight
lines in all directions then adding curves,
corners and patterns.
Increasing the challenge:
The worksheets steadily increase in difficulty by adding more curves and corners, and by having narrower paths.
Read my full review here.
Only $3.99!
Visual Motor Workbook
The Visual Motor Workbook contains a mixture of paths, dotted lines and unguided drawings
Your child will practice lines, patterns and shapes.
Increasing the challenge:
There is a logical progression from paths and tracing to drawing activities.
Read my full review here!
Only $7.99
Lines, Lines and More Lines
Lines, Lines and More Lines has a mixture of worksheets.
- 24 task cards (2 per page) where the child needs to trace over grey lines.These are suitable for preschoolers.
- 4 worksheets of tracing patterns
- 5 much harder worksheets where the child must copy a pattern (unguided lines) - these are suitable for older kindergarten
- 3 pages of a fun dice game where your child needs to draw various small lines inside pictures according to the roll of the dice.These are unguided lines.
Read my full review here!
Only $3.99!
I Can Draw Shapes
I Can Draw Shapes helps your child progress from dotted lines and paths, to unguided drawings, for each shape.
Increasing the challenge:
Each booklet is for a different shape, and your child will progressively master each shape.
Read my full review here!
Only $3.99
I Can Draw ShapesVisual Motor Exercises
The worksheets are a mixture of paths, dotted lines and free-hand lines.
Some of the free-hand worksheets require your child to draw a path from one object to another (eg from star to star), other exercises require your child to draw a path between the obstacles (eg between clouds).
Because the unguided worksheets are rather challenging, I prefer to draw a dotted line on those for younger kids to follow.
Increasing the challenge:
The workbook is not actually
set out in order of difficulty, I personally would pick the paths
first, and then the dotted lines, and
then progress to the exercises where your child has to draw the lines
without tracing.
Read my full review here!
Only $4.99!
Comparison of Early Elementary Resources
Follow The Path
These dot-to-dot pictures require the child to replicate the shape by drawing unguided lines from one dot to another.
Increasing the challenge:
These visual motor activities worksheets are graded from easy (vertical and horizontal lines) to more difficult (diagonal lines) to quite challenging.
Read my full review here!
Only $3.99!
Monster Mazes
This download contains a variety of different visual motor resources that increase in challenge as below:
- 9 pages of mostly visual motor paths and a few tracing lines
- 2 pages of visual scanning activities
- 2 pages of "follow the path" dot pictures
- and 2 pages of challenging visual motor drawing activities, in addition to a few more uncategorized activities!
A wide variety of worksheets!Read my full review here!
Only $3.99!
Crossing Paths
This visual motor pack contains only free-hand unguided visual motor activities worksheets, 24 in all.
Increasing the challenge:
The 24 puzzles are laid out from easy to difficult. Ideally, have your child plan their path using a finger before using a pencil or crayon.
These puzzles are quite challenging as they require your child to use planning skills, so the paths don't cross over.
Read my full review here!
Only $1.99!
Grid Drawing
Your child needs to complete the pictures with unguided lines.
A full picture is given as a guide, and your child uses this to finish the incomplete picture with the missing lines (and/or colors).
Increasing the challenge:
The easy worksheets require your child to add a couple of small lines to complete a drawing.
The more challenging worksheets require your child to pretty much copy the entire drawing on the
grid alongside the given picture.
Read my full review here!
Only $2.99!
Graph Paper Drawings
Your child will be drawing unguided lines to complete the picture and/or copy the picture.
Increasing the challenge:
The drawings start with easier 4x4 block grids, and increase to more challenging grids which are 18x18 blocks.
Your child will also progress from completing half a picture to copying a complete picture.
Read my full review here!
Only $3.99!
Let's Hang Out
These worksheets will help your child learn to draw by copying diagrams step by step, with unguided, free hand lines.
Read my full review here!
Only $1.99!
Discounted Bundles!
Use a visual motor activities worksheet from a different download every day to keep your child interested and focused!
Preschool Visual Motor Activities Worksheets Bundle
Contains the following downloads:
- Visual Motor Workbook
- Penguin Pencil Challenges
- Lines, Lines and More Lines
- Visual Motor Exercises
- I Can Draw Shapes
Only $17.45
Total Value = $24.95
Contains the following downloads:
- Visual Motor Exercises
- Patterns
- Follow the Path
- Monster Mazes
- Crossing Paths
Only $13.95
(Actual Value $19.95)
Help your child learn to draw with this discounted range of printables!
Contains the following downloads:
- Grid Drawing
- Graph Drawing
- Let's Hang Out
Only $6.28
(Actual Value $8.97)
Thank you for visiting my site! I hope this page helped you in your search for good quality visual motor activities worksheets!
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Honesty Point
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on the sale of any of these printable worksheets if they
are purchased from my site. However, the reviews are all mine
and completely honest. I had found and used their products myself before
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All activities should take place under close adult supervision. Some activities use small items which may cause choking.
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