Belgau Balance Boards

 

Since the 1960’s, Frank Belgau, formerly the director of Perceptual Motor Therapy at the University of Houston, College of Optometry, has been carefully experimenting with a variety of activities and tools to improve children’s reading performance. It is his firm belief that learning problems can be remediated, that intelligence is not static, and that many children and adults can be helped to succeed in school and in life.

At the University he directed a parent training program in which parents and children spent 1 1/2 hours twice a week for a month working to overcome the children’s reading and learning difficulties. Many of the parents in those programs were scientists associated with the NASA space program. Their insights helped to direct his attention to the effect of balance on the learning processes and, from that direction, to the development of the Belgau Balance Board.

His program is the result of his observations and experimentation over the last 40+ years. The foundation of his program includes the Belgau Balance Board and those materials and activities that he has found to be the most effective and most powerful in showing a consistent improvement in reading and learning performance and in developing intelligence.

Children’s timing is important because it is a key factor in sports, music, dance, speech, and general life functioning. Ongoing studies have detected strong signs of a relationship between improvements in children’s timing and in their reading.

Activity on the Belgau Balance Board generally results in faster reading, improved comprehension, improved visual acuity and improved binocular visual function. Even after an individual does ten to fifteen minutes of activity on the balance board, short-term improvement can be observed. However, with continued use, significant improvements can be seen over a longer period of time.

 

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