Contrary to the common notion, a coloring app is not just for kids. Thankfully, many people, including hesitant adults, have been seeing its benefits in recent years. One of those is helping with motor skill and vision improvement.
Now, exactly how does a coloring app do wonders for motor skill and vision improvement?
Coloring, as an activity, helps improve your hand-eye coordination. Therefore, using a coloring app is no different. Besides helping you with motor skill and vision improvement, a coloring app will also provide you with convenience.
For example, what if you don’t have art materials? What if you want to color while commuting? You can use a coloring app and satisfy your coloring urges.
In this post, we discussed more how a coloring app helps with motor skill and vision improvement.
How a coloring app helps motor skill and vision improvement
A coloring app may involve the user to tap the drawings and apply the colors only; however, that doesn’t mean it can’t help in motor skill and vision improvement.
Through constant use of a coloring app, you can enhance the following elements: detail orientation, spatial intelligence, bilateral coordination, endurance, and sensory processing. Developing these elements, in turn, will help in your motor skill and vision improvement.
Read on to find out how a coloring app can help enhance the elements needed to boost your motor skill and vision improvement.
Spatial Intelligence
Your sister doesn’t get easily lost in a mall, even if it’s her first time. She easily assembles a table without looking at instructions. She has what they call a visual-spatial intelligence.
When a person can easily understand the relationship between objects and space, then he or she has high spatial awareness. If you could improve your visual-spatial intelligence, you could naturally improve your vision.
Now, when we say vision, we’re not just talking about the clarity of your eyesight, which might be hindered by a disorder like astigmatism or nearsightedness.
We are referring to your sharp ability to perceive what you see and create smart insights from it. And you could improve that when you use a coloring app.
On a coloring app, you could easily fill in the various shapes with colors, but they have to look nice and coherent. So, it’s best if you could see the object as a whole, so you can figure out which color should go where.
This will improve your visual-spatial intelligence, and ultimately, your vision.
Detail Orientation
When talking about detail-orientation, fastidiousness might come to your mind first. But that is not just the type of detail orientation.
According to attentiontodetail.com, a person can be naturally detail-oriented or selectively detail-oriented. The first one means a person doesn’t have to make an effort to be detail-oriented. That is just his or her second nature.
The second type, meanwhile, means a person can be detail-oriented when they have to be. For example, an employee can be exceptionally detail-oriented in the workplace; but in other places, they are not that fastidious. They might miss out on a lot of hidden clues in an escape room, for example.
Using a coloring app may improve your attention to detail because it includes drawings that have intricacy. You will color minute shapes, which are easy to miss if you’re not that detail-oriented.
So, if you’re the second type of a detail-oriented person and want to improve on that, you can use a coloring app.
Bilateral Coordination
When a person can do tasks effectively either with their right hand or left hand, they have good bilateral coordination.
Another sign of good bilateral coordination is being able to “cross the midline.” That means your dominant hand (right, for example) should be able to do the same thing your helper hand (left) is doing, and vice versa.
It could also be that your helper hand can easily replace the space occupied by your dominant hand.
For example, I am right-handed, but I should be able to scratch my elbow or brush my teeth using my left hand. Babies, since they don’t have developed bilateral coordination, will use their hand that’s closer to reaching an object, for example.
Bilateral coordination is important in developing motor skills like fine, gross, and visual. Now, how can a coloring app help you improve your bilateral coordination?
On a coloring app, you could easily take turns in using your right and left hands in tapping and filling in the colors. By doing that, you could make your bilateral coordination better. Eventually, this will also help your motor skill and vision improvement.
Grip Strength and Endurance
Based on a study by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, grip strength is a sign that your muscle is healthy and well. It’s even a sign that your overall health is optimal.
We use our hands for multiple menial and creative tasks, so it’s only imperative that they have good muscle health. But with a hectic schedule, it’s better to opt for accessible ways to increase your hand’s grip strength and endurance.
What’s a good way to do that? Yep, you’ve guessed it. Coloring.
In a prolonged coloring activity using crayons, kids often feel hand strain. Using a coloring app may be easier, but that doesn’t mean you’re not building endurance.
Whether you’re doing broad strokes or tapping on a screen, using your fingers to color is a good way to build small muscle endurance.
Coloring apps like iColor have drawings that have intricate details. You are still going to squeeze in your smartphone screen to tap on the smallest shapes. At the same time, you’re still using your finger’s muscles.
Eventually, you could build endurance in your hands and strengthen your grip.
Sensory Processing
When a person has sensory issues, it means their brain can’t process information properly. As a result, you may become oversensitive to completely numb to sensation, visual, or auditory elements.
Having sensory issues will affect many areas of a person’s life. It will affect their performance in school, workplace, or sports, and even their relationships. If sensory issues don’t get fixed in childhood, it will soon become a Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD).
While having SPD is common among children, that doesn’t mean adults can’t get them. To adults who are already suffering from SPD, occupational therapy is the most common solution. One activity in occupational therapy is coloring.
Coloring helps in alleviating sensory issues since it helps in eliminating boredom, stress, and anxiety. These elements are known to trigger plenty of disorders, including sensory issues.
If you’re an adult who’s having sensory issues, you could try using a coloring app. This will help calm your brain, making it easier for you to focus. Plus, with a coloring app, you don’t need to sharpen your color pencils or worry about running out of wax crayons.
Other activities that help motor skill and vision improvement
Besides using a coloring app, you could also try these other activities to improve your motor skills and vision:
- Use tweezers or tongs when cooking.
- Do eye exercises several times a day.
- Play video games on your PC, PS4, or Nintendo Switch.
- Consider Vision Therapy.
- When you’re stressed, squeeze a stress ball.
- Do finger exercises.
- Practice doing exercises that improve fine motor skills—for example, crawling, pushing a tire, etc.
Conclusion
Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you can’t improve your motor skill and vision.
Besides, with the hand- and eye-straining tasks we do every day, it’s only essential to work on motor skill and vision improvement. One of the best ways to do that is by using a coloring app like the iColor App.
Not only will using a coloring app help sharpen your motor skills and vision but also nourish your creativity. You’re not too old to play with colors.
Related questions
Does coloring help your brain?
Definitely. Coloring has the same effects as meditation—it calms your amygdala, which is the fear center of your brain. Therefore, even an activity as simple as using a coloring app will already relax your brain.
How does coloring help a child’s intellectual development?
Through using a coloring app, a child can foster his or her creativity. He can also develop planning skills since he visualizes the colors he will use or the strokes he will make.
When do kids start coloring?
Kids can start using coloring materials as young as two years old. You could let them use bigger crayons so that they can grip it easily. This will improve their grip strength, too.
iColor App: Best coloring app for motor skill and vision improvement
If you’re a busy adult who wants to work on your motor skill and vision improvement, color your heart away with the iColor App.
Our coloring app has dozens of artistic drawings you can fill with solid color and gradients. We’re talking about fantasy scenes filled with florals, animals, mandala patterns, cars, and many more!
Coloring has never been this fun and convenient. You could easily add our coloring app to your routine of improving your motor skill and vision.