Tag: Play

What’s In Our Playroom?

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Spend any time in an online forum with parents of children with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI), and you’ll see a common theme that gets asked repeatedly. It’s also something I have been asked many times through the blog and/or the Everyday CVI Instagram page.

“What toys does your child like?”

Of course, each person with CVI is unique – and just because one child gravitates to a particular toy doesn’t necessarily mean that another child with CVI will be equally interested in it. But more often than not, children that are in similar CVI Phases and/or have comparable mobility tend to enjoy related toys/activities (which surely stems from the fact that there are 10 shared CVI characteristics).

At some point I planned to write about the incredible birthday gifts Rosalie received when she turned 2, the amazing Christmas gifts from last year that enhanced our everyday play, and (most recently) my all-time favorites from her 3rd birthday…but despite my best intentions, life happened and here we are entering the end-of-year holiday season of 2020 and I have yet to impart this information. But all of that changes today!

Without further ado, I’ve compiled a giant list of all the wonderful toys I’ve been meaning to share about for months. The easiest way for me to do this is to simply share about what’s currently in our playroom! It’s not practical or helpful for me to list literally every single thing in the room, especially because I have other children that play with things that are not visually accessible to Rosalie. Rather, I’m sharing all of the things Rosalie actually plays with and/or I’m working on intentionally introducing (you know, novelty).

Let’s get to it!

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“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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This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

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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Tactile Sensory Play Activities

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I have never been much of one to label my parenting “style” or “methodology,” but I suppose if I had to I would say I’m somewhat “Montessori-ish” in the sense that I value hands-on learning activities that foster independence and collaborative learning. I also highly value imaginative free play, which means I spent years avoiding (or at least limiting) toys that produce various lights, music (except for instruments, of which we have many), or sounds…. And then I was blessed with a child with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI).

Rosalie was exiting Phase I CVI and starting to cross into Phase II the first time we got her official “CVI Range Score” from an endorsed professional (find one near you!), but was still a young baby with delayed motor skills so a lot of what I first implemented involved Phase I strategies to get her looking. LIGHTS, SHINY THINGS, and TOYS THAT LIGHT UP quickly found their way into our home as I resigned myself to (and perhaps grieved a little) the fact that Rosalie’s CVI meant she just would not be a “Montessori learner.”

But you know what is super Montessori and arguably MORE important for children with CVI than for their typically-sighted and/or neurotypical peers? HANDS-ON SENSORY PLAY!

These days I find myself being far more intentional about providing tactile, active learning experiences for Rosalie than I ever was for her big brothers (after all, with typical sight they have access to incidental learning). There are so many ways to tap into your inner-Montessori (if that’s a thing?) and incorporate sensory play, so today I will share just three activities we’ve been doing.

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Creating a Felt Wall

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As my daughter with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) has progressed further into Phase II, I find myself constantly searching for new ways to integrate her vision with everyday functions. There are all kinds of ways to visually adapt Rosalie’s everyday “free play” time (creating defined spaces, providing toys and an environment that address the ten characteristics of CVI, etc.), but one tool I created specifically for this purpose is: a felt wall.

Felt10-wm

What is a “felt wall,” you ask? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Instead of making a “felt board,” I selected part of a wall in our play room to cover with felt. This provides a sturdy back-drop on which I can display any number of felt pieces.

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8+ Beginning Books for CVI

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I love (good) books. As a child, I was a huge bookworm. As a mother, I could seriously read to my children nearly all day long if they would let me! I think one of the most personally devastating parts of discovering our daughter’s Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) diagnosis for me was the realization that reading books with her (and teaching her to read) will likely require a great deal of adaptation – and it simply will not be the same experience as I’ve had with her big brothers. Still, I am filled with hope because some children with CVI can become skilled readers – and even fall in love with literature.

In her (new!) book, Cortical Visual Impairment: Advanced Principles, Dr. Christine Roman-Lantzy writes:

“I now know that some children with CVI will achieve the prerequisites for reading and ultimately become competent readers, while others will follow a different path. But I cannot foresee ahead of time which individuals with CVI will read, so I believe that all children must be provided a path to literacy. Some will use symbol systems that are not word based. Others will learn a discrete set of words that can be used for short passages or functional reading. Still others will become skilled readers who will ultimately read fluently, with comprehension and pleasure…. So I encourage my colleagues to take the risk of believing that your students with CVI are capable of literacy no matter what form it ultimately takes….” (p. 37)

Personally, at this point in time I must choose to believe that Rosalie (my daughter with CVI) can and WILL achieve literacy. Right now she is only 16 months old, so we have a long way to go on a path to literacy – but she takes an interest in 2D images (a skill that typically emerges in Phase II CVI) and is at a great age in regards to neuroplasticity. This is a prime time to read picture books with her and focus on building her repertoire of “known” objects!

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14 More Gifts for a Child with CVI

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In recent weeks I have shared my daughter’s 10 Favorite Light-Up Toys and some holiday activity, gift, and dollar store ideas for children with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI). But, I feel compelled to build on these posts and share some wonderful new items because my daughter, Rosalie, just received several Christmas gifts that I have been able to seamlessly incorporate into her everyday life with CVI – in play time (the best therapy!), bath and dressing routines, scheduled therapies, and when we are on-the-go (car rides, stroller rides, medical appointments, etc.).

I hope this list of 14 “CVI-friendly” gifts sparks some ideas for those of you seeking holiday, birthday, or “just because” gifts for your loved one(s) with CVI.

FYI: Rosalie is currently in Phase II CVI, is 15 months old, and is not fully mobile (but can roll/do tummy time and is working so hard on sitting independently and the pre-crawling “quad” pose). Some of these items may be more appropriate if any of these things are also true of your child with CVI, but some can be used by a child of any ability in any of the 3 Phases of CVI. Without further ado, here are 14 fantastic gifts my daughter received for Christmas.

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10 Favorite Light-Up Toys

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One of the ten characteristic visual behaviors of Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) is “light-gazing” or “attention to light.” My daughter, Rosalie, is at a point on the CVI Range where she does not need light (or low lighting) to visually attend to things, but lights can still be hugely beneficial for her visual attention. So, today I’m sharing some of her tried-and-true favorite light-up toys!

Because the multi-sensory input of lights AND music playing at the same time can be too complex for some children with CVI to process visually, I’ve broken down the list into the categories of “musical” and “non-musical” for easier reference. Fair warning, though: Rosalie LOVES music (it’s one of her favorite things), so this list is heavy on the musical light-up toys. And speaking personally, I cannot handle toys that make a bunch of obnoxious sound (Goodness knows my 3 kids make enough noise on their own!), so almost every musical toy we have plays classical music – because that is one thing I can handle (and even enjoy) listening to over and over and over and over….

MUSICAL LIGHT-UP TOYS

1. Baby Einstein Glow and Discover Light Bar Toy

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Creating Defined Spaces for Play

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Within days of receiving Rosalie’s CVI diagnosis I made a mental list of all the places she regularly spends time (the crib, high chair, car seat, bathtub, etc.) so I could think of how to make those spaces more visually accessible to her (which you can read more about here). We were very home-bound when she was little, due to many factors relating to medical complications combined with my sheer terror when I thought about the possibility of her (or her big brothers!) getting sick that fall/winter/spring. But, because Rosalie has two big brothers we necessarily spent a great deal of time engaged in free play throughout the house.

We clearly have two spaces in which the boys regularly play, depending on what time of day it is: the designated play room (located upstairs) and the living room (located downstairs near the kitchen). These were the two rooms in which I would spread out a big baby blanket and create a “play space” for Rosalie as she grew, so the obvious next step after learning about her CVI was to make both of those baby play spaces easier for her to see. I really don’t think I had even learned the visual term “defined spaces” yet, but it made perfect sense to minimize the complexity of these spots where I would regularly lay her down with some toys.

The living room was pretty easy, because I had already naturally carved out a little safe space for Rosalie where her brothers quickly learned to stop running, slow down, and be extra careful (we had made strict rules early on about not getting on her baby blanket without asking my husband or me). So, all I needed to do was trade out the blanket for one that is solid black (which I purchased on Amazon). Then, I placed a black tri-fold “science fair” board near the blanket so we could minimize complexity while she was side-lying or doing tummy time.

Dedicated Space9

Since Rosalie was 7 months old when we received her CVI diagnosis she had long out-grown our “real” baby play mat that came with hanging toy attachments, but her CVI meant that she really needed to have things hanging above her that she could practice looking at. She was not yet mobile (she had started rolling to her sides and a little bit onto her stomach), so having things hanging above one space where she could not move from was an important way to integrate vision into her play time.

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