"How Blind Kids See the World"

I received this email about this from a colleague today. I think it will be fun to watch!

Date: 01/25/2013
Airing Monday, Jan. 28, at 8PM (ET/PT) on Nickelodeon
NEW YORK, Jan. 23, 2013 — Kids describe what it's like to live without sight in the brand-new Nick News with Linda Ellerbee special, "Out of Sight: How Blind Kids See the World," premiering Monday, Jan. 28, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Nickelodeon. They discuss the challenges and opportunities they face living in blindness.
"There are actually people who will stay away from us or won't talk to us," says 15-year-old Alyssa of Colorado Springs, Colo. "I had a friend - we were really good friends - and after I went blind, he stopped coming around."

"Some people see my blindness as an easy target for bullying, for ridicule. You know, taking advantage of my blindness," says 14-year-old Chrisof Baltimore, Md.The special discusses how many blind kids know more about what they can do than what they cannot and how they use technologies to help them navigate a "sighted" world.
"Some people choose their clothes by using their vision," says 15-year-old Santiago of Hollister, Calif. "I use an application on my phone that tells me the color of my clothes."
10-year-old Xin Ju says she sees being blind as an advantage. "I don't need to see something to believe in it. We use our hearts and our imaginations."

"We've listened to what these kids tell us," says Ellerbee. "What they want sighted kids to know about them which is, in most cases, that they are just regular kids. But me, I think they're pretty special."Age Groups
All ages (birth to 26)
Parents of children with visual impairments

CVI Look Profile

My fave CVI guru, Gigi, created this super awesome "Look Profile" for one of her CVI kiddos. I happened to be wandering by her desk as she was sharing this snazzy profile with a colleague. Of course I begged her to let me share this on the blog! There is a lot of information to fit on to a standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper but with a simple enlargement on the copier (8 1/2 x 11 to 11 1/2 x 17--it's usually an auto setting), you can have a nice large map of this Look Profile. Just fold the large paper in half and it will become an 8 1/2 x 11 that folds out. 

Are you not sure what you are looking at? This Look Profile allows the team to see "at a glance" the CVI issues for the student. It's beautifully organized into all the important categories of CVI (i.e. latency, movement, complexity, etc.). This is a handy resource for your team (especially classroom teachers) to get an idea of what your child with CVI sees and needs.  Parents should also know how to use and read this. When parents know how to read this, they can help share information with the team as well. 

I am experimenting with how I can upload documents to share (and then you can do an easy download). The link to the publicly shared Google Docs  CVI Look Profile is here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3qOj9emFfL1S3NTWHRtQlR4YmM/edit

In the event that the link doesn't work (although I have tested it before publishing), email me and I will send you the slide. You can email me at robbin.keating@gmail.com. This is great to use in annual education reports. Just the perfect CVI accessory for IEP season. 

Correct Cane Techniques Handout

Happy 2013 friends! How about starting out this new year with a new post from our dear mobility friend, Jessica? She made a handout for one of her teams so that they would know how to all work together to help their student with correct cane technique. I was helping her take pictures for her mobility handout and knew I smelled a win win post idea so with her permission, here it is! It's three easy lessons (with pictures!) and it is perfect for getting everyone up to speed with mobility needs.

Correct Cane Technique 101

by Jessica Eichfeld, COMS

Lesson 1: Index Finger Grasp and Arm Position
Index Finger Grasp: with cane in desired hand, student places index finger along the flat side with the other fingers and thumb wrapped around the grip. Should be holding cane towards the middle of the grip.

Arm Position: Arm should be extended at mid-line about waist height. Good checking point is the belly button.

Lesson 2: Cane Arc
Cane arc: The reason behind holding the cane midline is so the individual will cover both sides of the body equally. The width of the cane arc is 2” beyond widest part of the body which is typically the shoulders. When walking behind your student you should be able to see the cane moving from side to side, if you can not see the cane while walking behind then they do not have a wide enough arc. 

*It is a wrist movement not an arm movement. Unless wrist movement is limited.

Lesson 3: In-rhythm and In-step
In-rhythm: The cane moves ‘in-rhythm’ with the student’s feet. “Every time you take a step you move the cane to the right and left.” Tip: using two-point touch (tapping the cane side to side) helps create a rhythm they can hear.

In-Step: In order to stay in-step the student must first be in-rhythm. In-step means that the cane moves with the opposite foot. For example when the student steps forward with their right foot the cane moves to the left. This allows for more space between the foot and the cane, giving them more time to react to drop-offs and obstacles.

 

Snow Play

Happy Christmas friends! Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday week. I found this idea (in yes, again Family Fun magazine, smile from me) and forgot about it until this evening when it finally snowed here in New England. This original idea is for amping up a snow angel but I am sharing it because the idea is actually a nice little vision modification for our kids! Snow play is fun but it can be really frustrating, visually fatiguing and an orientation and mobility nightmare for our kids. The harsh glare of the snow on our kids is like kryptonite! Plus, it's all white!! No contrast at all. Have no fear this winter my friends! Let's use these three simple ideas to make snow play fun for our kids! 

Idea #1--using the spray bottle and food coloring: genius! You 

can use this a few ways but here's my first idea: you can create borders (aka a defined work space) to help our kids know where to play or what's happened. Remember to be generous with food coloring as we want the strongest color possible (are you thinking red, too?). Let your kiddo use the spray bottle too! (a great OT activity). You could also create a target for our kids to aim (tracking skills) or tic-tac-toe (which is just plain fun). Hey, you could even write in Braille! 

Idea #2--Sprinkle bird seed on for a design. Bird seed is still a bit small for most of our kiddos to see but that's just your tip off idea. You can also find some pine needles, pine cones, etc. that could also help. This idea really does help with dressing up a snow angel. 

Idea #3--See above comments. 

Another idea that could be helpful is using some of those plow marker-stick-type things and paint them in an easy to see color and put them special places that can be hard to detect when playing out in the snow. This way, even though you can't see that tree stump, you've marked the yard with "hazard sticks" to alert our kids of potential blunders. 

Lastly, while we are discussing the fun of snow, I hope you parents aren't afraid to let your little ones go out in the snow. Yes, there are the above mentioned setbacks but there are also some fun pros. In a nice back yard, our kids can go set out on a backyard trek and explore! Snow is quite forgiving to jump, run, walk into, etc. with. All you need is the right snow gear and winter sports are fun and is a nice fit for our kids. Remember that skiing is an excellent and quite popular sport for kiddos with vision impairments. I started taking my Student Advisory Council students on an annual ski trip. There are lots of places that will be guides, instructors, etc. for our kids to ski. I spent some time tonight and just did a plain old Google search on adaptive skiing for blind children. I found lots of great resources! One tip that stuck out to me came from disabled-world.com which pointed out that guides for blind people are usually regarded as "equipment" and are generally no extra charge. If you are in the New England area, check out STRIDE adaptive sports, http://www.stride.org. We used their adaptive ski instructors at Ski Sundown last year and it was amazing! They were excellent instructors. You will just have to check on costs. I am sure there are other resources since this is a Paralympic sport and quite popular. It would be a great family fun adventure and a life long sport.So grab your ski pants and hit the slopes!

My student Chris, Braille reader, coming down with his guides from STRIDE. 

Last of the Christmas-ish ideas...These could still be good over winter break too!

Countdown to Christmas! It's just around the corner and sweet nibblets, I can't believe I put off Christmas shopping!! I just got it done this past Tuesday. Luckily for me I am firm to the three presents per child rule. This year the spirit of making homemade gifts just filled me up. My fiancee and I made tie quilts for each of our kids and we made art buckets. In between all the crafting, I still thumbed through some magazines and found some fun ideas. These ones are keepers not just for the actual holiday of Christmas but are super fantastic for the whole winter holiday. Here's my last three recipe/craft/projects. I LOVED these pie in a jar ideas!! I thought they were just perfect for our kids. I photographed every detail of these. I am going to try them after Christmas over winter break. I'll post them when I do them. 

I loved this next idea as well but let's face it, it's never gonna look this pretty with little hands and hand under hand work so rest assure that it might not look the same as this pretty picture. Nevertheless, I still think this is a great idea and something fun to hand out to neighbors, family, church members, etc. Remember to still work the connected teaching experience by letting our kiddos go to the store to buy the items. I think it works because our kids like to eat chocolate chip cookies so there's a little motivation there. 

Lastly, peppermint bark! I know I use this every year. It's such a good kid recipe (tweens to teens, too!!).  There are so many version of bark but here's just another one that I found. Making peppermint bark is also super fantastic for kids who are MIVI/DB and ASDVI. They really can't mess it up! Plus most of these special kiddos like to hammer the peppermint. I also like to add Heath toffee chips to mine as well as swirling the milk chocolate and white chocolate chips. Peppermint is also a strong smell that most of our kids dig as well. Feel free to sprinkle peppermint sprinkles or red sprinkles too!

 And remember to go to Target the days after Christmas for your

 CVI stock up bonanza!! 

Happy holidays my friends! I'll blog again soon after the holiday and while I am on winter break with my sweet little kids. 

CVI Buys

photo from flickriver.com

     Okay, I can't remind everyone enough: This is the time to stock up on your CVI supplies!! Shiny red ornaments, paper,ribbon, curlies, etc. are EVERYWHERE!! Buy now, use later!! I was worried that my little post about this got flushed to the bottom because I have a ton of holiday postings.  Buy some clear bins, label them with what your CVI supplies are and keep them in your closet.
      Not sure why? Because red shiny objects get trickier to find as the holiday closes. We get one little last chance at Valentine's Day (but it's slim pickings by that point usually). Another good reason is because you may not need any more shiny things at home but have you thought about creating a resource stash for your therapists, teachers, church meetings, play groups, grandparents? etc.? You don't want to bring your only CVI toys everywhere---what if you lose them? They get destroyed? The teachers love it and want more? Parents, get proactive and make yourself a little resource stash! 

     We are lucky that here in CT we have a fabulous CVI team with lots of great resources and materials but if you live somewhere far out with not much in the resource department, you've got to get proactive! Buy yourself a little clear bin and make yourself a resource stash that you can pull from. Wouldn't it be great if you had CVI modifications already at the places you frequent the most--church? play groups? grandparents? etc. Since a majority of our kiddos with CVI also have multiple impairments anything we can do to make packing to go easier definitely helps so hit up the Dollar Tree, go to Target after Christmas, use your JoAnn Fabric coupons and start stocking up :)