Turnings Image Puzzles 4

Learning to read is a complex and challenging experience for many young children. It success requires a number of very important vision abilities that develop during the early childhood years. Learning Lab Technologies’ Turnings Image Puzzles are designed to develop an important vision ability in children called visual closure. This is a fundamental ability required in learning to read.
Number Four in this set of puzzles is designed for children in children 5 and up.
Children with autism or other developmental disabilities will also find the puzzles a fun and an interesting challenge. The individual pictures will be of benefit for them also in developing both receptive and expressive vocabulary.
While the general objective of this app is developing visual closure, labeling or naming the objects in the puzzles is an another activity that children will enjoy.
We encourage parents and teachers not to name the objects before the child has completed the puzzle first. Once the puzzle is completed, let the child name the object or ask for its name.

About Visual Closure
Visual closure refers to the brain’s ability to “fill in” visual information from what one sees in order to recognize what it is. This ability is especially important in recognizing partially blocked or obscured items. In reading it relates to our ability to see a whole word and to recognize the configuration or outline of the word. Other abilities are needed to accurately discern the specific letters sequence of letters in words.
Weakness in visual closure often shows up as miss reading “saw” for “was or transposing numbers or letters when writing them down or naming them. Other signs of weakness can include general clumsiness, occasional stumbling or over-reaching when grasping for objects.
Unaddressed weakness in visual closure can lead to stress in the visual system since one is trying hard to read. The stress is caused by this inefficient processing of printed material. Students are likely to experience difficulty in learning to read or, later, have problems completing extended reading assignments. Parents may observe their children resisting or avoiding reading and exhibiting poor posture while reading.
Again, these behaviors are due to accumulating stress in the visual system. As a result, comprehension can suffer since much energy and attention is being given to just getting information in accurately. There can be nagging doubt about what one is reading. Comfortable interaction with newly received information during reading (comprehension) is, therefore, usually frustrated and diminished.
In our experience working with students, we have seen many who found reading difficult. Testing results almost always indicated poorly developed visual closure. This weakness will eventually lead to more problems when academic demands require students to learn from reading. These test results made it increasingly evident that instruction had to address visual closure before most anything else in order to insure student success and enjoyment in learning-to-read and reading-to-learn.
In short, it is important for visual closure to develop early before reading becomes an essential skill for academic progress. Learning Lab Technologies' four Turnings Image Puzzles apps were created to develop visual closure in young children from toddler through beginning elementary.