I love to get my children's brains going, I love to see them think in different ways. I like to get those neurons firing! Online I have seen many visual perception exercises but when I tried to track them down they were all overseas (not in English) and expensive workbooks to get here. So once I tracked down some resources that are accessible I thought I definitely need to share them. 

Firstly though - what is visual perception?

Visual perception refers to the brain's ability to make sense of what the eyes see. Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment by processing information that is contained in visible light. 

Visual perception can help with reading, writing, puzzles, cutting, drawing, mathematics and many practical life activities.

Visual perception is made up of some of the following skills, which are addressed in some of these activities. 

• Spatial Relationships - Understanding the relationships of object within their environments. The ability to identify the position of two or more visual stimuli in relation to oneself and/or in relation to each other. 

• Figure Ground - The ability to locate something in a busy background. The ability to screen out  irrelevant visual material when presented with a lot of visual information at one time. 

• Visual Memory - The ability to recall visual traits of a form or object. The ability to remember what is seen for immediate recall. It involves forming a mental image or picture or the characteristics of any given image once the stimulus has been removed. 

• Visual Closure - The ability to know what a form or object what part of the picture is missing. The ability to recognise any given visual stimulus from an incomplete presentation. 

• Visual Discrimination - The ability to determine differences or similarities in objects based on size, colour and shape. 

One of the great things about the resources we have found is they are progressive. They start at the basics for toddlers and continue through to the complex for much older children. Observing my children work made it easy to see where they were at. In the Montessori classroom many of the sensorial work includes visual perception skills. These are not Montessori activities however they are activities that as a parent I found really stimulated my children - really got them thinking. My children also found them engaging but I think that is about finding that sweet spot where the work is not too hard and not too easy.  

This activity above is like many Montessori type matching activities. Matching the animal to a close-up or skin or feathers. With this BambinoLuk system the child moves the top tiles and places them on the matching or corresponding bottom image. Once flipped over the tiles make an image which works as a control of error. 

Above left is matching butterflies - however the bottom butterflies are orientated differently. Above right is matching coloured rods - however the rods are orientated differently and are also crossed over. Otis at four needs to concentrate a lot for these two and finds them challenging.

Above left is matching objects to different perspective, the top images are from an aerial/top position and the bottom tiles are from a side position. To the right is a drawn image at the top to be matched to the same image below although the bottom image has a background and is in different colours.  

These two above are of the MiniLuk system. To the left is identifying the individual shapes in the image. The right is working out of three images (in each group) which is the odd one out. 

Although we are not a worksheet family I think these have some appeal and some of these are very similar to worksheets Caspar has used at school. Perhaps good for a rainy day.

If you have some fun visual perception exercises that you have used at home please feel free to share. Have you used the BambinoLuk or MiniLuk system? It's so different (in a really good way) to what I expected. Thank you to The Pinay Homeschooler and Indonesia Montessori for sharing their MiniLuk experiences with me. 

BambinoLuk and MiniLuk are also available in Australia at Fun Start for Kids (BambinoLuk here and MiniLuk here). All worksheets are by Visual Learning for Life (UK) but accessed from Teachers Pay Teachers. The very top Positive/Negative Image are a print out I made by searching for black and white images then reversing the colours.