4 Simple Activities for Visual Seekers

If you find visual input calms, grounds and helps you to focus, then these 4 simple activities for visual sensory seekers may help. Knowing what works for an individual means you can make it part of the sensory toolkit. Visual seekers crave it because it’s almost like the world through their eyes is muted and so they seek out bright colours, contrasting patterns and flashing lights. Activities can also help improve visual memory too, which is an important life skill.

Sensory activities can be an important part of a sensory diet.

What is a sensory diet? Well, its nothing to do with food, despite the terminology. It is about ensuring an individual has a good mix of sensory activities that meet their needs. None of us tend to just have needs for just one sense – we are multi-sensory creatures and need a mix and that forms the diet.  Most people do however, have a dominant sense, so this should feature heavily in the sensory diet. It has been proven that having awareness of your sensory makeup, combined with building resources and activities to meet those needs can have a fantastically positive effect on staying regulated and calm. It is vital that you understand how the person responds to activities, if the goal is to calm and ground, but the activity is having the opposite effect, making them hyper, or overwhelmed, then it’s not the right activity.

Focusing just on sight and visual activities, here are 4 visual activities that are simple yet effective:

1. Your classic light-up toys, lava lamps and color-changing items. Having these in a space at home, work, or school where you can access them and immerse yourself in the mesmerizing visual stimulation.
2. Visual apps – there are all sorts of apps now that can cater for visual sensory needs such as Lava Lamp HD, Sensory Magma and one of my favourites is Glow Lamp. Glow Lamp works from your phone and you place a bottle of water on top. You can set colour, speed and various settings which then makes the water bottle become your own personalized visual stimulation centre! Apps are great for accessing what you need to feed your visual seeking needs on the go.
3. Spot the difference –  An old classic, simple, but so effective at working your eyes and keeping them busy! Anything is strong bold colours or even black and white contrasting can be really good.
4. Wear bright colours or patterns – perhaps have a scarf to hand that you can pull out your bag or wear and then enjoy the visual stimulation from it.

Oh, and one last tip about screens – usually we are all about not wanting too much screen time, whether it be iPads, tablets, phones or the TV. But by their nature, they are visually stimulating. So a muted TV while doing something you need to concentrate on, can actually be a great way to feed the visual system. If you have more tips to add to our 4 simple activities for visual sensory seekers then send us a message or post in our sensory support group. We’d love to hear them!

We have a range of products that are enjoyed by visual seekers. Check them out here!

On Sensooli, if you spend over £30 you get a FREE gift.