Labyrinths or Mazes As Visual Exercises To Work On In Vision Therapy

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Vision Therapy Exercises

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How can labyrinths be used as visual exercises to work on in vision therapy?

What are the benefits of mazes? Why are they good visual exercises, and how can we apply them in our routine to treat amblyopia?

If you are wondering about these questions too, keep reading because today we will learn about the 14 benefits of doing mazes.

We will show you how to work them and how they are included in visual therapy, particularly in treating amblyopia.

We have created two PDFs with a total of 100 mazes. We’ve organized them with different difficulty levels and divided them into easy and complex mazes.

Moreover, we have included a link to a resource that teaches you step-by-step how to do our mazes online.

What Are The General Benefits Of Doing Mazes?

Mazes are one of the favorite pastimes of children. Despite being a fun and easy game, they are good visual exercises to work on amblyopia, among other things.

Mazes offer us plenty of benefits, not only for our visual development.

Solving a maze is an activity that requires many skills, such as attention, accuracy, observation, patience, self-criticism, and perseverance.

Mazes are mental puzzles where our challenge is to find the exit. We must figure out what the correct path is and follow it continuously.

Remember that it is best to adapt the maze difficulty level to the abilities and age of the person because if the level is too high or too easy, we may get bored or frustrated and end up not finishing it.

14 benefits of doing mazes

1. Visual perception and observation

To be able to solve a maze, visual perception is one of the essential skills we can apply and improve.

We need to visualize and calculate every potential path toward our exit as we alternate our visual focus from one element to the entire visual field.

In addition, we practice visual attention and visual-spatial coordination, eye-motor coordination, visual tracking, and visual memory.

2. Attention span

Human attention is limited, and keeping attention on the same activity is sometimes difficult.

Working with mazes strengthens the attention span because the person doing it remains focused throughout. It teaches you to remain patient.

3. Ability to concentrate

The ability to concentrate involves holding attention, which is achieved through motivation.

And this motivation is indirectly based on concentration to find the way out of the labyrinth.

4. Mathematical ability

By doing mazes, we train abilities and skills that will later help us solve mathematical problems or play a sport.

5. Problem-solving

During the labyrinth’s path, we are in a constant decision-making process to reach the exit.

Therefore, by doing the labyrinth, we will work on executive functioning skills, including organization, planning, strategy, sustained attention, time management, and remembering details.

Moreover, it will help us face the challenges we encounter along the way.

6. Spatial orientation and spatial relationships.

Mazes stimulate stimulation of spatial orientation by requiring you to use different directions to get from one position to another along the correct path.

7. Planning, anticipation, and logical thinking skills.

Thinking logically, planning, and anticipating our next steps to reach our goal of reaching the end of the path.

8. Motor skills (fine motor skills).

This is an excellent exercise to work on fine motor skills by following the path through the maze with a pencil or finger.

It requires coordinating small, precise movements, which improves hand-eye coordination.

9. Diagnostic tool for assessing learning processes.

Allows us to track how our child’s skills progress by observing the child’s decision-making ability, execution, spatial perception, learning speed, etc.

10. Encourages perseverance

You don’t want to leave the maze until you finish it!

11. Encourages resourcefulness

As we have to find different options and solutions to reach the end of the path, we thus exercise our minds.

12. Develops abstract thinking and intuition

Intuition and abstract thinking are stimulated when we regularly solve mazes, thanks to the constant analysis of the solution of possible exits.

This allows us to find the exit with increasing ease.

Abstract thinking is worked on when searching for the solution to the labyrinth. This is the key to cognitive development, the ability to analyze and be creative.

13. Ability to self-evaluate.

A labyrinth allows us to evaluate ourselves at every step we take. If we choose the wrong path, we must observe that on our own and figure out a new path to continue on. It is training our ability to correct mistakes quickly and change course.

14. Self-confidence

Labyrinths are perfect tools for building self-confidence. We will start with simple labyrinths, which we can solve quickly. And then, we will increase the difficulty little by little.

Mazes and Vision Therapy

Why do mazes male for good visual exercises for vision therapy?

Doing a maze uses visual-motor integration, that is, the coordination of hand movements based on the visual information received.

For example, visual perceptual and motor skills do not communicate effectively or coordinate properly in visual disorders like amblyopia.

Therefore, we practice coordination between the two skills by working mazes as visual exercises in vision therapy.

Moreover, the mazes require us to do a general scan of the maze to find possible exits.

This promotes visual attention and visuospatial coordination through horizontal and lateral movements, a skill also used for reading and writing.

It also develops fine motor skills because following the path of a maze with a pencil requires coordinated and precise movements to avoid touching the walls and following the path correctly. Eye-hand coordination skills can be improved significantly.

As we can see, mazes have many educational qualities for children of all ages (as well as adults).

In addition to simply being entertaining, they help kids develop cognitive development and other essential skills and functions.

Mazes work on attention and concentration, orientation, visual memory, and fine motor skills. They encourage attention, planning, and anticipation in problem-solving as they develop accuracy, observation, and decision-making skills.

Conversely, amblyopia presents several challenges, including oculomotor control, spatial awareness, accommodation, and visual information processing. This is why mazes are an excellent visual therapy tool for amblyopic children.

Note: While mazes are excellent visual exercises and suitable for vision therapy, thanks to their plentiful benefits, we should remember to seek advice from our optometrist or ophthalmologist. They are the ones who can tell us whether these exercises can be beneficial for our therapy or that of our family or whether they are just a good pastime for us.

To download the easy mazes in PDF: Labyrinths Easy PDF.

To download the difficult mazes in PDF: Labyrinths Difficult PDF.

You can print out these mazes, but you can also do them online if you prefer.

To download and do the mazes online: Labyrinths Online: How to edit a PDF to do labyrinths online.

How to use the mazes as visual exercises to work on amblyopia

We created the mazes in 2 different PDFs to use as visual exercises to work on amblyopia.

These visual exercises can be done with an eye patch or with a red filter:

Visual Exercises - Labyrinths with patching

How it works:

-Eye-Patch: Any kind, whether it is made of fabric, pirate, glue, or silicone. We will cover our dominant eye, and in this way, we will make the lazy eye work to gain strength and visual acuity.

When we do the mazes with the patch on, we work the lazy eye, which will help us strengthen it.

We are working on eye-motor coordination and integrating visual and motor skills by using the pencil to follow what our eye sees at each step.

Labyrinth with patch – Print or online?
You can choose to print the maze PDF and work on it from print, or you can upload our PDF to an online program that allows online PDF editing.

If you want, we’ll show you how to do that in Labyrinths Online: How to edit a PDF to create online labyrinths.

Visual exercises - Maze with a red filter

How it works:

– Red filter: We refer to the red filter patch used in vision therapy or anaglyphic glasses where one of the lenses is red.

The dominant eye then has a red lens in front of it, and we have some elements that can only be seen by the amblyopic eye.

The mazes can be made with a red filter patch or anaglyph glasses (provided by the optometrist at vision therapy).

In this way, both eyes are open and work together. Only that part of the information received comes exclusively from the lazy eye; the other eye is “blocked” by the red filter.

What is a red filter, and what are anaglyph glasses?

The red filter patch is a lens or filter used in vision therapy for the anti-suppression treatment of amblyopia to achieve binocular vision.

On the other hand, anaglyph glasses are glasses where each lens is a different color, one red and the other blue (or green), to work on binocularity, where each eye can see two different things.

However, we will only use the red lens for our mazes. Therefore, the blue (or green) lens will not give any other information to the other eye. Still, it will see the same thing as the eye with the red filter in front of it and, in addition, the blocked parts for it.

Our PDF of mazes adapted for the red filter
As you can see in the maze PDF, the walls of some mazes in the PDF have a color other than black. This color, which we selected, should be blocked by the red filter.

Although we have verified with our anaglyph glasses and our red filter patch that it is impossible to see with the eye that has the red filter, please also verify that it is the same with your glasses or filter.

If your red filter does not block the color of the walls, don’t worry, you can still do the same exercise using a pencil with a color not visible through the red patch.

How can we check if our red filter is blocking the color?

Checking if our red filter is blocking a particular color is very simple.

The goal is to use a color that -if we put the red filter on our dominant eye – will not be seen by that eye. But we will be able to see it through our lazy eye.

Let’s do the test:

We choose the maze on page 4 whose walls are NOT black. Or we write with a reddish, orange, or pink pencil.
We put on the anaglyph glasses or the red filter patch.
We cover with our hand the eye in front of which the red filter is NOT.

Result: we may not see the walls of the labyrinth. Or if the pencil is blocked by the filter, the drawing may not be visible on the paper.

All About Amblyopia Eye Patch Therapy

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Red filter maze - Print or online?

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#1 Mazes to print

Download and print, preferably in color.

If we choose the first option, we need to download the PDF with the selected mazes, either the PDF with easy mazes or the PDF with complex mazes, prepare the printer to print our mazes, and choose a good pencil to fill them in.

Choosing the color of the pencil

For black mazes, you need a pencil color blocked by the red filter, usually reddish, orange, or pink.

This way, we can only see the red path with the amblyopic eye and the whole maze with both eyes.

For the colored mazes: We can choose to do the visual exercises with a black pencil, or we can choose to add difficulty by selecting a pencil whose color is blocked by the red filter.

We have a double challenge if we choose a red (or similar) color pencil, marker, or pen to follow the path.

Before we begin the path, we must check that the colored pencil we choose is also blocked by the red filter to ensure that only the lazy eye can see it. Not all red pencils are blocked by the filter. Online mazes

#2 Online mazes

We can choose not to print the mazes and complete them digitally from the computer or tablet.

Besides being much more ecological and environmentally friendly, doing the mazes online is a lovely way of doing it.

We are sure that our little ones (and the not-so-little ones) will be motivated to do mazes from the big screen, and if we are lucky enough to have a touch screen, we can do them with our finger.

How that’s very simple, but we’d rather show you step by step in Labyrinths Online: How to edit a PDF to make Labyrinths Online.

We hope you enjoy these mazes, but consult an eye doctor to see if these visual exercises are right for you or your family before doing them.

Easy Maze PDF or complex Maze PDF

As you will see, we have two PDFs below:

Easy Mazes:

The first PDF is a selection of 44 mazes we’ve assembled for beginners. Whether a child or an adult, you’ll find several pages where the difficulty gradually increases.

See what your child’s level is, and feel free to adapt the mazes to your child’s current situation.

Difficult mazes:

In the second PDF, we created 56 mazes that can be done by both adults and children, always depending on the level of each.

The difficulty level of these mazes is higher than the previous ones. In the same way, check your level and adjust it according to your current needs and situation.

And now, get your best pencil ready and find the exit of our mazes!

More About Amblyopia or Lazy Eye

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