Suggested Activities

Toys to Encourage Eye-Hand Coordination and Perceptual Skills

Four and Five Year Olds

  • Puzzles with 3 or more interlocking pieces
  • Smaller beads with flimsier string, jewelry strining kits
  • Preschool scissors and a snazzy variety of paper, stiffer paper is easier to cut
  • More complex peg boards with thinner pegs, stacking pegs, pegs which are laced, size graduated, barrel pegs
  • Toys to prepare for writing: Magnadoodle, art kits with variety of large thick crayons, markers, chalk, brushes with variety of paper and paint activities.
  • Changeable markers
  • Glitter Glue
  • Stringing cards
  • Pipe cleaner crafts
  • Simple paper crafts
  • Sticker books
  • Color Forms
  • Glow in dark drawing boards
  • Stencils- coloring around borders or inside
  • Activity books with large simple mazes, dots to connect, circle what is different pictures, finding hidden pictures, color in the named shapes, drawing lines to matching pairs.
  • More complex, smaller legoes, Tinker toys, Lincoln Logs, Knex and other construction toys  
  • More complex books, tapes and videos with movement songs and sign language
  • Play kitchen supplies, carpentry tools and household gadgets
  • Copying design patterns with mosaics, blocks, pegs, beads (make jewelry), geoboards.
  • Cut and glue books
  • Crafts kits including: glue, pipe cleaners, large paper clips, clothes pins, cotton balls, scissors, paper.
  • Wind up toys with smaller knobs
  • Get-a-Grip Patterns
  • Picture Perfect (find matching tiles to place on grid)
  • Paper weaving or place mat weaving kits
  • Ink stamps
  • Snap Lock Beads
  • Spinning Tops
  • Marble Run
  • Crayola Color Wonder- motivates to color using nonmessy materials
  • SuperGears
  • Clay/ Model Magic
  • Creepy Crawlers- pour goop into mold, bake to make slimy creatures
  • Squirt toys

Commercial Games

  • Candy Land-requires matching
  • Color Shape Bingo-teaches matching skills
  • Hi Ho Cheerio-teaches counting skills
  • Mr. Potato Head Memory Game
  • Don't Wake Daddy- Uses a spinner and counting spaces while children try to avoid waking
  • daddy.
  • Don't Spill the Beans-requires children to try to and more beans to the pot without it spilling.
  • Swat That Fly-This game encourages tracking as the child follows a fly and tries to swat it.
  • Hands Down- requires speed and visual matching
  • Squiggly Worms- requires color matching
  • Elfin Game- trains keeping the eye on the target as your child nets butterflies flying out of
  • the elephants trunk.
  • Crazy Crab- a motorized game involving a large crab guarding pearls in the ocean. The
  • player has to steal them by picking them up with large tongs which look like crab claws.
  • Fishing Around Game-Child coordinates putting rod in fish mouth as they move
  • Mr. Caterpillar Alphabet game- teaches letter recognition as children gather letter
  • cards.
  • Ants in the Pants-press down on ants to make them jump into pants.
  • Hungry Hungry Hippos - press a lever to feed opening mouthes.
  • Cootie- first player to finish building the strange creature wins
  • Crocodile dentist game - players take turns counting teeth until the crocodile tires
  • to give a friendly bite
  • Whack a Mole- when the mole pops up, the player whacks it.
  • Monster Mash- discriminate which monster is different bbefore mashing
  • Toy Darts
  • Chutes and Ladder-move pieces on board, no reading required

Five Year Olds and Older

  • Rubber Band ball kit
  • Complex puzzles
  • Scratch Art
  • Paper mache kit
  • Hole punchers (hand squeezed and finger pushed punches)
  • Etch and Sketch
  • Color by Number Books
  • Ed Emberley learn to draw step by step books
  • Dolls with complex clothing fasteners, squeeze clothespins to hang out doll clothes
  • Leather Lacing
  • Gimp
  • Hama beads
  • Simple cook books with pictures and numbered steps
  • Crafts kits- i.e. make a bird house, soap molding kit, etc.
  • Lego and other construction toy kits with diagrams to follow
  • Cut out dolls and other complex shapes
  • Cut paper flakes
  • Pot Holder Weaving
  • Hair braiding and other braiding or knot tying craft kits
  • Activity books- crossword puzzles, anagrams, decoding, Word Search, unscrambling words, Hang Man, Jotto)
  • Balloon Sculpture books and supplies
  • Origami
  • Tissue Paper Flower crafts
  • More complex weaving activities
  • Yo Yo's
  • Juggling
  • More complex musical instruments

Commercial Games

  • Booby Trap requires the player to gently remove a shape from the board without moving the other pieces
  • Checkers
  • Chess
  • Cranium
  • Pictionary
  • Life
  • Risk
  • Taboo
  • Othello
  • Yahtzee- teaches math concepts
  • Operation- Use tongs to remove body parts
  • Perfection- quickly match shapes into board before all pop out.
  • Don’t Break the Ice players use a mallet to tap plastic pieces of ice without the ice man falling through the openings
  • Guess Who-players need to find out who the friend’s mystery person is by eliminating all other possibilities.
  • Simon develops visual and auditory memory
  • Slamwhiche -requires speed and matching
  • Sorry
  • Traffic Jam Junior and Traffic Jam-a player maneuvers vehicles on a grid to get an ice cream truck out of traffic.
  • Clue Junior and Clue
  • Monopoly Junior and Monopoly
  • Parcheesi
  • Boggle
  • Plunk A Skunk - As each of the skunk heads on the playing field light up you have to whack them with the Plunk-A- skunk mallet to score points
  • Blast Out- a motorized air power action game requires keeping eyes on a ball while it is
  • catapulted into a large cup and air pushes the balls up into another level.
  • S'getti Scatter -plastic spaghetti is in a bowl. Children remove pieces one by one without letting the plastic meatballs fall through to the bottom.
  • Loopin Louie -, a motorized flip-flopping flier game requires visual tracking to follow Louie in his air plane as he flips around. The player tries to keep him from knocking over the tokens by
  • hitting him with a paddle
  • Mouse Trap- constructed project is used to send a ball cascading.
  • Toss -Across- toss a bean bag into board attempting to create a tic tac toe pattern
  • Bingo
  • Kerplunk- players attempt to remove sticks from the marble filled tube without losing any marbles.
  • Barrel of Monkeys- players need to hook the next monkey to bottom of strand
  • Labyrinths –there’s a variety of games on the market which are like three dimensional mazes.
  • Pick-Up-Sticks- require removing a stick without touching any others
  • Jacks- gather the jacks before catching the small ball.
  • Card games(i.e. Rummy, Spit, War, Crazy Eights)
  • Dominoes
  • String games (i.e. Klutz book which teaches Cat's Cradle)
  • Snafu- players push buttons and turn dials to speed a ball over a maze course.
  • Dice games
  • Magic Tricks
  • Air Hockey
  • Toy Fooseball
  • Trouble -move pegs on board amount on die.
  • Connect Four
  • Junior Scrabble/ Scrabble
  • Jenga
  • Bed bugs
  • Battle Ship- teaches graphing concepts