How does looking for a toy support your toddlers future reading skills?

Although learning to read is still a way off for your toddler, they are already mastering skills that lay the foundation for reading. Find out how visual skills, like finding a lost toy, will help when it comes to learning to read. 

Developing control over their visual skills is an important part of your toddler's journey to being a confident and fluent reader in the future.  

When they are learning to read, they will need to be able to scan a busy page and focus their attention on individual letters or words as they move across the page.  

Searching for a particular object or picture involves both visual scanning and figure-ground recognition – skills that are useful when we read.  

Visual scanning involves being able to look across a picture or group of objects to pick out a particular item or picture.  

Figure-ground recognition is being able to focus on the visual information that is actually needed. In this case, that will become the ability to focus on the next word your child needs to read, instead of trying to read all the words in a sentence at once. 

Looking for a toy in a toy box, or a particular picture in a story, can help your toddler to develop these visual skills. 

It will take time and lots of practice for your toddler to develop these skills, as there is so much visual information in the world for them to process.  

Finding playful opportunities for them to practise identifying individual objects in a group can help build strong foundations; it’s also a brilliant way to play when you’re short on time!  

At first, they may need small or more spread out groups of items to pick from, but as their visual scanning and figure-ground recognition develop, your toddler will be able to find items in busier places, or more complex images.