Visions of the Blind

Holiday time for all children is very exciting: school parties filled with sugar, traveling to visit family, presents, and extra time at home. Holiday time is the PERFECT time for families to support development in the ECC (Expanded Core Curriculum) area of ADL (Activities of Daily Living) especially in the KITCHEN. Keep those little minds and hands busy over the break while having fun and building concepts! **Challenge for adults: STEP BACK when possible. Your child should be hands on during all parts of the activity by either direct touch/manipulation or utilizing hand under hand (child's hand rests on top of adult's hand). Introduce parts of a microwave by making popcorn Things to do: Apply a bump dot to the add a minute or 30 sec button Introduce to parts of the microwave allowing time for hands on exploration Have child help gather needed materials (popcorn, bowl, etc.) Picture: Bu...

                                    Picture description: Picture of 4 cut out paper turkeys with bright feathers and numbers 1-4  on their bellies lined up in a row from left to right. We all know visual efficiency skills play a role in our students with low vision. Sometimes, as TVI’s, we need to help our students learn to use the vision they have more efficiently. Visual efficiency is how an individual uses their current vision. Vision efficiency skills are a set of skills that help a student with learning tasks and understanding their environments.  Visual efficiency skills include visual discrimination, visual memory, eye-hand coordination, visual imitation, visual attention and fixation, visual closure, and visual tracking, scanning, and tracing. One of the visual efficiency skills tha...

(Picture is of a 'Sensory Turkey'. It is a Turkey shaped base with multiple feathers. Each feather has a different texture.) This week in the blog post we are going to explore different ways to expose students who are blind or visually impaired to different sensory activities of the Fall Season! Keep in mind that many of these ideas incorporate Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy Skills, so it could be fun to collaborate with other professionals on these activities!  They also can include Orientation and Mobility or Body Awareness Skills. If doing this activity with a student, always check for allergies prior to making the activity as many of the Fall recipes can include nuts, gluten, or other allergens! Since Halloween is just passed, many of you probably carved pumpkins. If you painted or left the pumpkin whole, here are some activities you can do to introduce your child to the many parts of the pumpkin. (Picture is of a divided dish with 7 compartments, 6 ...

Most Itinerant Teachers will tell you that traveling all over the place means that you basically live out of your car. This article is aimed to help you stay organized and efficient while on the road, keeping your car looking professional and clean, while being prepared for whatever can happen! First things first, you have got to be organized! This is not negotiable! Think about how wonderful it would be to just open your trunk, grab the right bin or bag and go right into a school. No more digging around for what you need. There are so many ways to make sure that this happens: Keeping a bin or bag for each school ready to be pulled when you arrive If you have a full or part-time time driver, having a travel bin or bag for each school could be difficult. You could ask to keep a bin or bag at the school, in the classroom, or the main office. You could also ask your driver to have a section of the trunk to keep your supplies. If you own the vehicle, using the entire trunk space...

A few days ago, I asked some Facebook friends what they wished they knew before they started teaching. Goodness, I got some great responses! These amazing teacher friends of mine gave me my first few blog posts. This week we are going to discuss developing positive, healthy work relationships but also making sure to maintain a healthy lifestyle outside of work. This can be very hard for some people to do!   Developing healthy work relationships can be hard! Developing trust within the workplace is vital. At a recent conference I attended, one of the speakers said, "I will work harder for and with people who trust me and who I trust 100%!" When you work very closely with others, like all teachers do, you gain a sense of trust. We all have that one person at work that we bond to more than the others...that is natural. It is important to develop trust and working relationships with your co-workers. Notice that I said "working relationships", that means that you h...