8 Outdoor Hand Eye Coordination Activities for Kids
Use these outdoor hand eye coordination activities to help strengthen this skill with your preschoolers. The best part is, they’ll have so much fun doing them!
Activities that focus on tracking, throwing, and catching are perfect for helping to strengthen your child’s hand eye coordination. Having good hand-eye coordination will help your little ones develop the skills they’ll need for reading and writing.
Combine gross motor and fine motor activities to help your little ones improve hand eye coordination. The activities I’m sharing below are a great place to start.
Outdoor Hand Eye Coordination Activities
Set up kid-friendly sporting equipment in the backyard. You can set up a tee ball set, and let your preschoolers practice hitting the ball off the tee. Or, let your kids practice swinging a golf club with their very own golf clubs set. Swinging the bat or club is a great gross motor activity that will help your kids build hand-eye coordination as they work to hit the ball.
Roll a ball back and forth. Have kids sit with their legs apart. You (or another child) can sit the same way facing them. Roll the ball back and forth being sure to stop it before it hits the body. Kids will have to watch the ball closely to be sure they can stop it on time.
Play a game of catch. Stand a few inches or feet (depending on your child’s skill level) apart. Gently toss a beanbag or small ball back and forth. As they become confident, each person can take a step backward as they catch the ball or beanbag.
During the hot summer months, make sponge water bombs to use during your game of catch.
Play wall ball. This activity takes no prep work! Just have your child toss a ball to the wall or garage door and catch it when it bounces back. They’ll have to be alert and track the ball in order to catch it before it bounces away.
Use the hose for target practice. Set up some empty cans or bottles on a table or porch railing. Then, with a spray nozzle on the hose, let your kids take aim and try to knock down the bottles and cans with a stream of water. It’ll take some practice to accurately aim the hose at the bottles to knock them down.
Play corn hole, bag toss, or Baggo. For a long time, I didn’t realize there was an “official” name for bean bag toss or that there were boards you could buy for the game. However, bean bag toss has morphed into Baggo or Corn Hole and provides a wonderful opportunity for kids to practice aiming their bean bags at the hole.
Go bowling in the backyard. Fill the bottom of a few empty soda bottles with sand, dirt, or water to weigh them down. Set them up like bowling pins. Then, have your kids take aim, roll a ball, and try to knock down the pins.
Hammer tees into the grass or nails in a piece of wood. Kids can use a mallet to hammer plastic golf tees into the ground. Or, they can hammer nails into a piece or wood or a stump from a tree that’s been chopped down. This is a great gross motor skill, as well, as kids use their whole arm to swing the hammer or mallet.
What are your favorite outdoor hand eye coordination activities to do with your preschoolers and young children? Leave me a comment and let me know.
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Tara is the brains behind Homeschool Preschool, where her journey from preschool and public school teacher to homeschooling mom of three fuels her passion for early childhood education. With a blend of expertise and firsthand experience, Tara’s writings offer practical tips and engaging resources to support families in creating meaningful learning adventures at home.
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