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An Intro to Hannah - Unknown Diagnosis
My sister has disabilities... and no one seems to know their cause.
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Preschool Art Activity Tips For Children With Visual Impairments
By: Renata Bursten, Dragonfly Staff
With small adaptations, children with visual impairments can participate fully in art activities.
The key to adapting art activities for children with visual impairments is to offer mainly tactile instead of visual materials.
Here are eight ideas to get you started:
1. Use a glue gun or fabric paint to create dark tactile markings on the edges of the non gloss white paper. The same procedure can be used to outline any shapes so that children with low vision can colour within the lines and focus on their paper.
2. Provide an enclosed work area like a cafeteria tray so the child can keep their materials organized. Teach the other kids not to take materials from the tray without asking first.
3. Use three dimensional art materials such as play dough, and clay instead of flat pictures or stickers.
4. Offer textured paints. Try adding flour lumps, sawdust, or sand.
5. Make tactile paintings with Wikki Stix or string and glue. These can be felt with the fingertips when dry.
6. Make sure the materials are put away in exactly the same place every day.
7. Use coloured glue to help the child with low vision find it. Pick one colour always use it.
8. And most importantly, avoid doing the art for the child!
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PLAY Tip
Why do they put everything in their mouths?
One of the earliest fine moter skill children develop is the skill of "sensation". Sensation is the skill we use to tell the difference between a quarter and a dime by touch without needing to look at the coins.
Cognitively young children have their best sensation descrimination in their mouths. By mouthing objects and then feeling them with their hands, children correlate the sensations from two different sensory input channels.
,This "sensory intgration" helps them to tune up the sensory apparatus in the hands. As the hands become more sensitive, children will need to put things in their mouths less and less.
During this oral stage it is important to offer many textured grasp and handle toys. Dragonfly offers a full collection of well designed and easy to handle toys of this type.