Happy Halloween! I have a handful of upcoming posts that I have not yet had time to finish, but I figured I would at least pop in to share one special way I have incorporated Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) into our family’s Halloween decorations this year.

My husband and I began a yearly tradition of visiting a pumpkin patch (or, during the busiest years, a store that sells pumpkins) and painting a pumpkin for each person in our family. We were unable to paint pumpkins last year because we were a little bit busy with a certain newborn (cough, Rosalie), but we managed to resume the tradition this year – hooray!

I always get to paint the baby’s pumpkin, so you’d better believe I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to advocate and raise awareness for my daughter! Check out how I painted Rosalie’s pumpkin:

Pictured on the front is clearly Rosalie’s initial…but I took advantage of Halloween’s CVI-friendly color scheme to highlight an adaptation for teaching a child with CVI how to read! The black background with a white letter surrounded by a bubble of bright, high-contrast color (like orange) is a key adaptation that – paired with appropriate descriptive language – can help a child with CVI begin to see the salient features of a letter (or word’s) shape.

And check out how I managed to sneak in a little extra CVI advocacy on the back….

Rosalie is only a year old and will stay home while her big brothers go out trick-or-treating, so we do not yet have to worry about the complexity and sensory array of costumes or trick-or-treating (thank Goodness). But, for future reference I would love to learn about your own Halloween-related CVI adaptations!