Rice, Tweezers, and Dot-to-Dot Books

One easy to do fun activity that helps individuals strengthen their lazy (or amblyopic) eye is to fill in the gaps between the numbers in a preschool dot-to-dot book with grains of uncooked rice.

Directions: Put about a tablespoon of rice into a small saucer. Tape a dot-to-dot page to the table so it doesn't wiggle. Put a patch over the better eye. Using a regular pair of tweezers, pick up one grain of rice at a time and place it carefully down between the numbers in order. Continue laying down grains of rice one at a time until the entire puzzle is complete.

Why is this an effective monocular activity?

1. Because the page is likely to be the same color as the rice, seeing where each piece of rice should be placed depends on good visual acuity
2. It also requires good visual-motor-integration skills to manipulate the tweezers, isolate just one piece of rice and maneuver it to the paper

Our Amblyopic Intern is Getting Better

This morning our 4th year optometry intern told me that yesterday she asked our senior doctor to refract her and guess what? After four weeks of doing vision therapy activities with our patients - she has been wearing red and green glasses to "wake up" her amblyopic eye when facilitating activities with anti-suppression targets and wearing a patch over her "good" eye when facilitating monocular activities....her best corrected visual acuity in her amblyopic eye has improved significantly. She is surprised and thrilled.