Visual Tracking Games
Visual trackingA ball glides across the screen on slow, smooth paths. In Follow, the child keeps a finger on it and it glows and trails stars. In Catch, it stops now and then and the child taps it, or presses any key. In Watch, nothing is asked: the ball just moves, for eyes that are learning to stay with it.
What visual tracking is
Keeping the eyes on something that moves. Smoothly, without losing it, and with the eyes rather than the whole head. A baby does it with a face crossing the cot, a toddler with a ball rolling under the sofa, a six-year-old with a line of print moving from left to right and then, hardest of all, jumping back to the start of the next line. Occupational therapists call the smooth kind pursuit and the jumping kind saccades, and both are things the eyes learn by doing.
It matters more than it sounds. A child whose eyes cannot stay with a moving target finds catching, copying from the board, following a finger along a page and even crossing a playground harder than they should be, and none of that looks like an eye problem from the outside. It looks like clumsiness or not paying attention.
The three modes
| Mode | What happens | Input | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Follow | The ball moves. When a finger or pointer is on it, it glows and leaves a trail of stars, and the bar fills a little. Off it, it just carries on. | Finger or pointer, staying on the ball | The main one. Eyes and hand together, which is how tracking is used in real life. |
| Catch | The ball moves for a few seconds, stops and pulses. Tap it, or press any key, and it sets off again. | Tap, click, or any key when it stops | Waiting and watching. The switch-accessible mode. |
| Watch | The ball moves and never stops. Nothing is asked. Any tap or key changes the path. | None needed | Children who do not yet use their hands on a screen, and eye-tracking practice on its own. |
Three speeds. Slow is a full crossing in about eight seconds, which is slower than most children expect and is where to start. Paths change every so often: side to side, up and down, a wide circle, a figure of eight and a slow diagonal, because horizontal tracking is much easier than vertical or diagonal and a child who has one does not necessarily have the others. Maggie can take the place of the ball in the settings, for a child who will look at a face and not at a dot.
What to watch for
The child is looking at the screen; you look at the child. Four things are worth noticing, and none of them is a diagnosis.
- Head or eyes? Young children track with the whole head. Moving only the eyes comes later. If a school-age child still turns their head for a slow ball, note it.
- Losing it at the middle. Some children follow well on one side of the screen and drop the ball as it crosses the centre line. That is a known pattern and worth telling a therapist about.
- Jumping ahead. The eyes leap to where the ball is going instead of staying with it. Slower speed helps, and so does Follow mode, because the finger anchors the eyes.
- Fatigue. Tracking is tiring in a way that does not look like effort. Two good minutes beat ten poor ones.
This is practice, not assessment. A child who consistently loses the ball, follows on one side only, or turns away from the screen after a few seconds may simply be two years old, or may have something an optometrist or an occupational therapist should look at. This page cannot tell which. Mention what you saw.
Taking it off the screen
- A torch on the ceiling in a dim room, moved slowly. The oldest tracking activity there is, and still the best for a child who will not look at a screen.
- Bubbles, again. Each one is a slow, unpredictable target that the child chooses to follow.
- A ball rolled along the floor to the child and back, then across in front of them. Watching without reaching first, then reaching.
- A puppet or a toy on a string, moved in a slow figure of eight in front of the child's face, about thirty centimetres away.
- Finger under the words when reading to a child. That is left-to-right tracking with a return sweep, and it is the version that turns into reading.
The hand-eye coordination game is the natural next page: the same eyes, now steering a hand to a target that appears and moves. And the visual perceptual skills page explains where tracking sits among the other things the eyes and brain do together.
Accessibility notes
- Watch mode needs nothing from the child. It runs until it is stopped. Any key or tap changes the path, so a switch user can change it too.
- Catch mode is switch accessible. When the ball stops, any key on the keyboard counts as the catch, so a switch interface that sends Space or Enter works.
- Follow mode needs a finger or a pointer, and a large one is fine: the ball counts as touched from some way outside its edge, so a whole-hand press on a tablet works.
- Bigger ball doubles its size. On a tablet in full screen that is about the size of a fist.
- No flashing. The glow is a slow pulse. Colours are still.
- Reduced motion. If the device asks for less motion, the stars do not trail and the ball moves at the slow speed regardless.
- No timer, no score. The bar in Follow and Catch fills and then Maggie celebrates and it starts again. It never empties.
- Nothing is recorded. Only the mode, the speed and the settings are remembered, on your own device.
Common questions
What is visual tracking?
Keeping the eyes on something that moves, smoothly, without losing it and without moving the whole head to do it. It is how a child follows a rolling ball, a parent crossing a room, or a line of print from left to right. It develops in the first months of life and keeps refining through the early school years.
Which mode should we start with?
Watch, on slow, for a child who does not yet use their hands on a screen or who is just being introduced to it: nothing is asked of them. Follow, once they will put a finger on the ball. Catch, for a child who can wait for the ball to stop, and it is the one that works with a switch.
Is this a vision test?
No. It is practice, not assessment. If a child consistently loses the ball, turns their head instead of their eyes, or only follows on one side, mention it to an optometrist or the child's therapist. That is worth knowing, and this page cannot tell you why it is happening.
Does it work with a switch?
Catch mode does: when the ball stops, any key counts as the catch, so a switch interface that sends Space or Enter works. Watch mode needs no input at all, and any key changes the path. Follow mode needs a finger or a pointer on the ball.
How long should a session be?
Short. Two or three minutes of real looking is more than most children manage at first, and it is tiring in a way that is easy to miss because the child is sitting still. Stop while it is still going well.