This resource includes visuomotor skills by age and lists visuomotor integration developmental milestones. Visuomotor development, part of hand-eye coordination, begins at a very young age. From shaking a rattle and reaching for a baby toy, to reaching for a pencil and writing a letter, developmental milestones are what guide functional skill achievement! Let’s explore these visuomotor developmental milestones!

Visual Motor Skills by Age

If you follow us at The OT Toolbox, you know that I like to put my background as an occupational therapist into my posts. The crafts and activities we make are more than just fun and cute. Children can develop some important skills through play.

Visuomotor skills are required for many functional tasks such as handwriting and pencil use, scissors using clothing management and many more tasks.

How does visual motor integration develop in children?We put together this list development milestone Get a general idea of ​​development so parents can tell when something might be wrong.

It is important to note that every child is different and each child develops differently. These milestones are organized by stage of development. Always contact your pediatrician for medical advice. If occupational therapy is needed to help with delayed visuomotor integration, an evaluation by a licensed occupational therapist will be required to determine individual needs and treatment.

This hand-eye coordination activity post for toddlers has more ideas.

What is Visuomotor Integration?

Visuomotor integration often manifests itself in hand-eye coordination. It is the ability to use your hands and eyes in coordination.

However, visuomotor integration is somewhat different: the visual perceptual skills necessary for the visual component of visuomotor skills play an important role in the perception and interpretation of visual information.

Skill achievement brings greater precision and dexterity, as well as the motion planning needed to accomplish more difficult tasks.

Many functional tasks require visuomotor development:

• shake
• reach for a toy
• put the toy in your mouth
• Reaching for face when held (baby)
• remove food from the high chair tray
• Reach for a bottle or cup to your mouth and put it back
• releasing objects or toys (babies keep dropping things from their high chairs and love seeing adults pick them up and put them back so they can put it down again reinforces this skill)
• Coloring with Crayons – Coloring skill progress reaches milestones with age
• graffiti
• Play with toys – shape sorters, puzzles, cause and effect toys, etc.
• Holding a pencil to trace out shapes, form letters—this level of visual processing is necessary to reproduce forms and identify inconsistencies in written work. It plays a role in letter inversion and letter formation.
• cut with scissors
• navigation stairs
• conceded a goal
• catch the ball
• pour spoon
• Using Utensils – Progression from Spoon to Fork to Knife – Check out this resource for specifics on how to hold a spoon and fork.
• Cycling
• And many more tasks that require visuomotor skills!

Especially in eye-hand coordination, where the eyes and hands work together to move a pencil, catch a ball, thread a bead on a pipe cleaner, or other tasks that require fluid coordination of the eyes and hands in movement.

You can see how flexibility and strength in the hands, feet, core, and legs contribute to skill progression as eye and motor skills develop.

Visual components and motor skills begin to work together at a very early age and continue to become more efficient as the child grows. This is visual motor development!

Milestones in the development of visuomotor integration

These visuomotor developmental milestones are listed by typical developmental age, however, these are general developmental guidelines. There may be many other factors that affect skill achievement. If a child hasn’t mastered a skill by the dates listed below, that’s not a big deal. It may be that the paths to skill advancement are varied, and that’s okay!

If you have questions about these milestone skills and dates, especially if it appears that many skills will not be achieved in the months following the dates listed below, it may be beneficial to seek advice and an individualized assessment from a pediatric occupational therapist .

Resources may include our Parent Toolbox, Getting Started with OT, and what you need to know about child development.

one month:

• Track the rattle while lying on your back
• track side rattles

two months:

• Babies value their hands
• Track the ball left and right as it rolls across the table left to right and right to left
• rattling noise when lying on side

three months:

• Reaching for a rattle/toy while lying on back

four months:

• Reach to midline for rattle/toy while lying on back
• When lying on their back, the baby will touch both hands at the same time.

six months:

• Holds blocks/toys with hands together while sitting on adult’s lap
• Stretches arms out to reach for toys while lying on back

seven months:

• Transfer blocks/toys from one hand to the other while sitting on adult lap.
• Touch a piece of cereal with your index finger
• Hitting a toy on a tabletop while sitting on an adult lap supporting the toy

nine months:

ten months:

eleven months:

twelve months:

• Flipping the pages of a board book
• imitate stirring a spoon in a cup

Thirteen months:

• Mimic hitting a glass with a spoon
• Start putting large puzzle pieces into (Amazon Affiliate Link) Beginner Puzzles

Fourteen months:

sixteen months:

• Simulate building a tower of 2-3 blocks

Nineteen to twenty months:

• Build a tower of blocks, stacking 4-5 blocks

Twenty-three to twenty-four months:

Twenty-five to twenty-six months:

• Remove the screw cap from the bottle
• Stack 8 blocks
• start cutting with scissors

Twenty-seven to twenty-eight months:

• Mimic horizontal strokes with markers
• Strings 2 Beads (read more ideas on fine motor skills using beads to support this development)
• Mimics folding a sheet of paper (bending the sheet and making creases instead of aligning the edges)

Twenty-nine months:

• Imitation of building a train with blocks
• String 3-4 beads
• Stack 10 blocks

Thirty-one months:

• Build a “bridge” with three blocks

Thirty-three months:

Three to five months:

• Build a “wall” with four blocks

Thirty-seven months:

• Cut a piece of paper in half with scissors

Forty months:

Forty-two months:

• Cut within 1/2 inch of a straight line
• trace a horizontal line

fifty months:

• copy a square
• Cut a circle within 1/2 inch of the line
• Build “stairs” with blocks

Fifty-four months:

• connect two points to form a horizontal line
• Cut a square within 1/2 inch of the line
• Build a “pyramid” with blocks

Fifty-five months:

• Fold a piece of paper in half so the edges are parallel
• the color inside the line

Activities to help develop visuomotor integration:

Children’s developmental milestones are achieved through play. Use these game ideas to get your skills started:

Some of our favorite OT activities to support the development of visuomotor skills include:

Blue-themed sensory play for babies and toddlers

fine motor play with tissues

baby brain building

invitation to spoon and pour

baby ice bath

play with color

learning about apples and red

Learn Colors Cup

cup and spoon

Tracing the Letters: Letter Forming Handwriting Practice with Chalk

Tracing Lines with a DIY Lightbox

Pencil Control Worksheets You Can Make at Home

Christmas theme pen control activity – pen control DIY work paper

Bead Thread Awareness

Scissors Skills: Activities for Kids

Improve scissors skills with playdough

cutting foam beads

Use stickers to help with scissors skills

Scissors with fingers to draw fireworks

Icicle Winter Scissors Skills Activity

Rabbit Pliers Scissors Skills Activity

Color sorting scissors activity

Use the fine motor kit to support the development of visual motor skills and visual perception through hands-on, game-based activities:

Use these fine motor kits as hands-on activity kits to develop fine motor skills, strength, dexterity and maneuverability. Kids love these fine motor kits for motivating activities. Therapists love them because it’s a fresh and fun way to practice pinch, grip, manipulation skills, and more. Try some of these themed therapy kits: