Optical Illusions for Kids

So what your kids do during vacations? 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 yet playful then you can try to engage them in some optical illusions. Optical illusion is a great mind game that involves thorough observation, focus, and good concentration. They test our perception and challenge our vision. They say, what we see is not always true and this is what comes true when it comes to optical illusions. They stray away our mind from physical reality and make us look at things differently than what they actually are. Read further to get the scientific explanation of optical illusions that would help you draw your own optical illusions.

Benefits for Kids

According to experts, optical illusions help you make your brain sharper. They make you think hard about how a certain thing is possible and lead you to understand how a human brain works. In fact, how interesting the human brain is. It also helps in understanding the actual difference between 'looking' and 'seeing'. The term seeing has broad and general meaning whereas looking refers to observing something with an intention of comprehension and we try to seek meaning when we look at something. In short, optical illusions provide you with lots of food for thought, that helps you intensify and heighten your thinking process. It can also help your children develop good cognitive abilities and parents can use these games to train their children's mind. According to some health experts, optical illusions also help you in stimulating the right side of the brain that is usually not used by many people. Apart from sharpening your memory, these games also help you improve your problem solving skill, visual recalling and spatial reasoning abilities contributing to your intelligence. The most important benefit is that magic and optical illusions are fun to indulge in and are a great source of fruitful recreation.

Optical Illusion to Draw

There are various optical illusions for kids online, but creating your own is a challenging thing and is a great stress buster too. There are various aspects you can play with when it comes to drawing optical illusions, such as, motion, time, luminance, contrast, geometric shapes, and colors. Have you ever wondered why optical illusions occur? You will be surprised to know how the human brain works. Our brain always tries to make sense of the things we are looking at and optical illusion is 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. It happens because the brain is trying to make sense of the random lines. This is one of the important causes of optical illusions. Given below are some of the simple optical illusions that your children can take inspiration from and 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 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. If you will look at it carefully, you would find a stairway or it also looks like a window grill.



These were some of the optical illusions. Printable optical illusions are also available on various websites. Now you know how optical illusions work and how easy it is to fool our mind. Some sites can also provide you with scary optical illusions but it's better to keep children away from scary things. Instead let them indulge in creative and constructive optical images.