Tag: Motor Skills

“CVI-friendly” Magnetic Stacking Blocks

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Back in the fall, I was thinking about some of the fine motor goals I have for my daughter’s play time. She is 2 years old and very much loves “cause and effect” toys – things where she can push a button and make it light up, sing, dance, etc. These are really fun, rewarding toys (“I make an effort and this cool thing happens!”), but I also want her to be able to move beyond simple cause and effect toys as she grows (something we take for granted with typically-sighted children, but must intentionally teach and/or provide access to for a child with CVI).

When I reflected on this, my mind came up with two major categories of play that I wanted to move towards: “pretend play” and “building.”

Today on the blog I want to focus on “building.”

Do I expect my two-year-old that has physical developmental delays and Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) to suddenly become a mini engineer building the kind of elaborate Lego Duplo inventions her (typically-developing and sighted) big brothers began creating at age two? NO. But I often look to her typically-developing siblings and/or peers to generate ideas of where I’d like her to be able to go and/or what I’d like her to have access to in play (and life). 

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CVI DIY: Adapting Puzzles

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Puzzles are such a great activity! They promote and fine-tune functional vision in conjunction with cognitive and motor skills…and they are never too visually complex for a child with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI), right?! I mean…wait.

But seriously. Puzzles really are a fantastic activity that can assist with a child’s development (we’re talking visual and shape recognition, concentration, patience, fine motor skills, and more!)…when a child with CVI has access to them.

Every child with CVI has some type of medical history that has caused this brain-based visual impairment (whether that history is fully known or not), so I recognize that some children with CVI may not have physical access to traditional children’s puzzles, but in sharing how I have adapted puzzles for my daughter I am focusing solely on the issue of visual access.

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