If you want your children to engage in some brainy activities, the ones involving optical illusions are a very good option. Read the following article to know more about this topic, which will certainly help your kids to spend their time in a constructive manner.
During vacations, kids have total freedom regarding their daily activities. They watch TV, eat whatever they like, laze around, and probably go out to play something. But if you want them to do something creative, interesting, and playful, then you can try to engage them in activities related to optical illusions. These mind games involve thorough observation, focus, and good concentration. They test our perception, and challenge our vision. What we see is not always true – This phrase is proven to be true, when it comes to such illusions. They deviate our mind from physical reality, and make us look at things differently than what they actually are.
Benefits for Kids
According to experts, optical illusions help you to make your brain sharper. They make you think hard about how a certain thing is possible, lead you to understand the working of a human brain, and how interesting it is. They also help in understanding the actual difference between ‘looking’ and ‘seeing’. The latter term has a broad and general meaning, whereas the former refers to observing something with an intention of comprehension. We always try to seek meaning, when we observe new things (especially those in an artistic manner). In short, optical illusions provide you with lots of food for thought, which intensifies and heightens your thinking process. It can also help your child to develop good cognitive abilities, and parents can use these games to train their kid’s mind. According to some health experts, optical illusions also help you in stimulating the right side of the brain, which is usually not used by many people. Apart from sharpening your memory, these games help you to improve your problem solving skills, visual recalling, and spatial reasoning abilities, by contributing to your intelligence. The most important benefit is that magic and optical illusions are fun to indulge in, and are great sources of fruitful recreation.
Drawing Optical Illusions
There are various illusions for kids that are available online, but creating your own is a challenging activity, and also is a great stress buster. There are various aspects that you can play with, when it comes to drawing such illusions, such as motion, time, luminance, contrast, geometric shapes, and colors. You will be surprised to know how the human brain works. Our brain always tries to make sense of the things that we are looking at, and illusions are nothing but fooling your brain by showing something unusual. Human brain creates groups of specific patterns so that it can make sense of the world. These visual patterns include similarity, proximity, continuity, and closure. For example, if there are four vertical lines, our brain will perceive it as three columns. This happens because the brain is trying to make sense out of the random lines. This is one of the important causes of these illusions. Provided below are some of the simple examples. Your children can take inspiration from them, and also create some on their own.
Look at the picture carefully. What you think it is? Two circles or rings?
Well, it’s a top view of a glass.
Now in this picture, what do you see at the points of intersections?
There are only white circles at the intersections, the black circles are illusions.
What you think it is? Door inside the door or frames inside frames.
It is a top view of a staircase.
Look at this diamond pattern carefully.
You would find a stairway, or else, it also looks like a window grill.
Here’s our collection of printable optical illusions.
Now you know how these illusions work, and how easy it is to fool our mind. Some sites can also provide you with scary examples, but it’s better to keep children away from such things. Instead, let them indulge in creative and constructive images.