ECC Series: The ECC for Infants and Toddlers This video is posted online with the following chapter markers: Chapter 1. ECC & Early Childhood Chapter 2. Functional Vision Evaluation Chapter 3. Sensory Play & Exploration Chapter 4. Activities and the ECC Chapter 5. Work within Family's Routine Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End. Transcript Start Chapter 1. ECC & Early Childhood [Silence] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: ECC for Early Childhood Content: 3:00-4:00 PM January 14, 2016 Presented by Ann Rash, TVI, M.S., Early Childhood Consultant rasha@tsbvi.edu Holly Cooper, TVI, Ph.D., Early Childhood Consultant cooperh@tsbvi.edu TSBVI Outreach Programs Description End: [ Slide end: ] Ann: Hi, my name is Ann Rash. I'm with the... School for the Blind Outreach... Program, Early Childhood Specialist. And... we're here today to... continue the Expanded Core Curriculum... series that we've been doing and... my partner is? Holly: I'm Holly Cooper and I am with the Deafblind... Outreach Program. And we're working together on this... presentation about early childhood Expanded Core Curriculum. Ann: Right. So one of the things as we were... thinking about doing this presentation... we really talked about what- what does the Expanded Core Curriculum mean for an infant? And... really, when you think about it... In infancy, you're learning everything about the world. So you are moving through a developmental process, you're learning as you go, and that base- and you're learning how to take care of yourself, how to dress yourself... how to interact in your family. And that's really what the Expanded Core Curriculum is all about is how to‑‑ how to... be successful in every environment that you're placed in. So when we think about the role of the vision teacher... for our students who are infants through early childhood, then we‑ we know that those things that we're going into the home and working with are strong‑ strongly related to the... Expanded-- to the ECC. And that basically the core curriculum are, you know, reading, writing and arithmetic or... any of those other things that we're talking about, it's really not develop- developmentally appropriate at that time. Holly: Right. Ann: It really is about... a child being involved in that sensory learning period, which is birth through two. But we also know... that infants lag behind typical development because of the visual imp- impairment, because they don't move out into space or they- they're not always going through typically development‑‑ because of the vision... loss. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Key Points Content: • Services from a TVI from 0 to 3 are strongly related to ECC (core curriculum is not developmentally appropriate) • Infants and young children lag behind typical development because of lack of visual experiences, Lack of incidental learning • It is because of this lag of achieving developmental milestones that VI and O&M services are provided from birthDescription End: And many people have described vision, I've heard pediatric ophthalmologists say that vision drives development or that vision is the organizing sense. Uh. So it's because of this lag of... of development, because of the visual impairment, that VI and O&M services are provided from birth. So some of the things that... [ Slide end: ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Evaluation Instruments Content: left-side text: Insite Developmental Checklist right-side graphic: Figure 1 Screenshot of Insite Developmental Checklist Description End: the Expanded Core Curriculum... other... webinars have talked about what kind of assessment instruments to use in.... determining what the- the child or what the baby needs to be learning, what the vision teacher-- what is the role in- in teaching? [ Slide end: ] So we have... pulled together the instruments that we feel are... valuable to a vision teacher to have in their little toolbox of... assessment items. So, why don't we look, just to refresh our memories, about what is on the... what- what kinds of... are we talking about when we say "the Expanded Core Curriculum?" [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: The Expanded Core Curriculum Content: • compensatory skills, including communication modes • orientation and mobility • social interaction skills • independent living skills Description End: So we do have compensatory skills, including... communication modes. And language and communication are... are the- those beginning, emerging skills for- for babies. It's also an area where our children sometimes lag behind. Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: Uh. Orientation and mobility. Those of you who work with toddlers and... and... early childhood Pre‑K, you know the-- and‑ and infants, you know that importance that they are always moving. Holly: Yeah. Ann: If they do not have a motor delay, they are moving. So... orientation and mobility, the social interaction skills and independent living skills that we've talked about. [ Slide end: ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: The Expanded Core Curriculum Content: • recreation and leisure skills • career education • assistive technology • sensory efficiency skills • self-determination Description End: Uh. We have rec and leisure skills and- and this is really... where we want to talk about play because rec and leisure skills are the older kids and adults play. Holly: That's right. Ann: And... of course, babies... play is their work. Career education and‑‑ if you've been to a PPCD classroom, where they have... the dressup area Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: then you see... you do see that children love to dress up and many times it is the fireman, the doctor Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: all of those different types of careers. Assistive technology. Sensory efficiency skills and self‑determination. And I like to say that the true definition of... self‑determination is... those two‑year‑olds who are [ Slide end: ] telling you "no" and saying... what they're going to do and what they're not going to do, so we could learn a lot from our two‑year‑olds. Holly: [ Laughter ] Ann: Uh. But as Holly and I were talking about the... Expanded Core Curriculum and infants... we took out four areas. Now... As... vision teachers, we know that... all of these areas overlap. But when you're thinking about a child developing and what vision interferes or- you know- the- the... what lags behind, because of a‑ a visual impairment, the impact of vision loss, it is on communication and language [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Major Areas of ECC for Infants and Early Childhood Content: • Communication • O&M • Sensory • Independent Living Assessment in all areas may not be necessary for infants and toddlers. Description End: O&M because we're not... as comfortable sometimes moving out in space... that whole sensory area, because again this is the sensory motor area of‑ of birth through two, and independent living. So when you're thinking about programming and looking at... what is it? If I narrowed down this Expanded Core Curriculum area, what should I really be focusing on? These are the four areas that... we felt like... are crucial in programmi ng... with infants. [ Slide end: ] So... usually, as we're doing our IEPs, or we're making our... goals, then we look at gross motor and then that‑ that falls within... O&M, rec leisure, play... and baby play equipment, which would be... assistive tech. Holly: Mm hmm. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Typical Goal Domains Content: Gross motor • Orientation & mobility, recreation & leisure (play, baby play equipment) Fine Motor • Compensatory skills, sensory efficiency, assistive technology (toys, active learning equipment) Description End: Ann: Fine motor. We want to‑‑ and, again... when we- when we said there were four areas that we were looking at, now- now we're breaking them down a little bit. So in motor, we have gross motor and fine motor. And for our kids with a visual impairment, then their‑ their... the way they're going to take in the environment, they really... need to have that fine motor tactile skills, which leads to your compensatory, your sensory efficiency, assistive tech and they do that through toys and‑ and active learning equipment. Then for our independent... learning, and living [ Slide end: ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Typical Goal Domains Content: Self Help • independent living Social Emotional • Social interaction, self-determination (behavior) Description End: Then that's where we're doing self help. And so self help for a baby is basically just learning. They are at that very beginning stage and it's really important for us to work in the home with the parents on ways to... to teach children self help skills. Because... many‑ many of us, we live in a very fast-paced world where it's... almost easier just to dress our children, feed our children and try to get out the door and... get to work. But this‑ this will be the ground floor area where... if we teach those skills now, and the kids become independent in dressing and feeding and all of those areas, that's only going to help... the progress as the child gets older and older. And social emotional. And this- this is an area sometimes we don't think about writing IEP goals. We might say, "Well, this is about bonding." But it is about bonding, but it's also about... "I feel comfortable. I am a part of this family. This is my... this is my job in my family. This is... when new people come, I know how to interact with them. I know that when I go to the grocery store... I can't yell and scream because I'm in public." Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: So this is sort of where we learn good manners, we learn how to fit and play well with others. [ Slide end: ] Chapter 2. Functional Vision Evaluation So the resources... of course, that you have all been working with... in this whole process of the Expanded Core Curriculum, is this book and you'll notice I have a lot of little stickies and that's basically... everywhere in the book that it mentions infants and young children. So... that is... there's a lot to say about that ...in our ECC book. So our next thing that we would... that I would like to‑ to show you... we have on our website... Lois Harrell is... a woman from... California, she's... developed a lot of products for APH. She works with babies. And we had her come and do videos about the Functional Vision Evaluation or Functional Vision Assessment. And as a part of that... to show the impact of vision loss... we happened to... go to do some videoing of a little girl and she had a twin brother. And so we did a‑‑ just a mini-functional on the- on the young brother, who did not have a visual impairment, so that we could just sort of look. And... they were about 11 months old. And so we're going to‑‑ this comparison shows you... the sister with a visual impairment and she did have some... other areas of developmental delay and she had some motor... issues as well. So... her brother... does not have those same... disabilities. And so Lois did... a functional... on him as well, so let's watch. [ Video start: ] [ Music ] Harrell: First was a little girl that's had some challenges and the first section was light perception, which she had. She was able to briefly lock in on it and follow it. Especially after it touched her hand and promoted awareness that it was in her space. At the same... time, she has a twin brother whose vision has not presented with problems to- to... his pediatrician. He was able to demonstrate light perception immediately. The ability to track it in all directions: up, down, across. And remember, we go across-around. The little girl at- skipped at mid-line when she went across. He just went right straight across, went down, up-- was visually curious enough to stick out his hand and reach. [ Video end: ] Ann: Another part of... the video-- there are four parts on our... wed- website. And, so, if you have a ba-- so we're- we're talking about gross motor. Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: And sometimes people ...You know, we think about, well, "Let's get the baby to roll over. Or let's get the baby to move." Or a lot of times... young children now are just not put on the floor. They're put in a container of some kind, a... bouncy chair or all of these other things. But it is so important for our babies, even if they're not moving yet... on their own, they're not‑ they're not... propelling themselves, then it's important for us to show them that‑ that they- they can... Number one, to just maybe move around the room. In this particular‑‑ the next video you're going to see... Lois was looking to see if the child‑‑ you- you noticed in that one, the little girl could- could... sometimes move to the light or she understood that there is light there. There was light perception. And so... we wanted to see if she could... recognize natural light and so... we put her on a blanket and Lois... just pulled her around the room and went by a window and we wanted to see if she would respond to that light. But as far- as far as programming for us as a vision teacher or an O&M, it's important to just allow that child to know how long it would take to be pulled around the room Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: to give that spatial awareness, even though they... are not... not moving... themselves and it is a different... sensory feel, because their body's in contact with the floor, than if they were in a stroller or if you were holding them Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: and- and walking around the room. So gross motor, even if the child is not able to propel herself, is still... very important. And as vision teachers, we need to talk with... motor people, with O&Ms, with perhaps the ECI motor people, to get ideas about how to do that. So let's watch the video. It's very short. [ Video start: ] Harrell: Especially when she was pulled in a blanket and pulled around past the window [ Music ] you could see her open up her eyes and look at the light. [ Video end: ] Ann: Uh. Another example of... of doing gross motor... activities, families or mom or dad can get involved and when... children... a lot of times our kids don't like their hands touching the carpet Holly: Hmm. Ann: pushing down and that will keep them from moving out in space or crawling Holly: Crawling. Ann: out in space. So... the next video is from the Washington State School for the Blind, and... the‑ the child is Joel and they had been working on hand-under-hand Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: and so Dad... decided to help Joel crawl and... use hand-under-hand because he-- Joel didn't want to... touch the carpet or to have his hands in contact with the floor. So let's watch this. [ Video start: ] [ Music ] Dad: So, let's crawl to the window. See if we can crawl to the window. Just crawl. Joel: [Indiscernible] Dad: Where's my hands? There they are. Big crawl. Big slobber. [ Laughter ] Crawl to the window. Here we go. [ Video end: ] Ann: So... one of the reasons we wanted to share these... videos is sometimes it's so... it's‑‑ just that little clip of video will give a parent an idea and... perhaps a parent might say, "Well, he just won't crawl, I don't know, what can I do about that?" And even though this strategy might not work Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: it- it's an idea and... and by... having that‑ that video, then it‑ it really... makes the‑ the observers understand what we're talking about hand-under-hand Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: and it also shows another young child who may be like theirs, but doesn't like to touch the floor. And that it's not that uncommon. So... it just‑‑ it builds almost a relationship... for the family. I also like it because it shows Dad involved ... Holly: Yes! Ann: and instead of just always Mom. Then when we look at fine motor [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Video and web resources to show Content: left-side text: Fine Motor right-side graphic: Figure 10 Screenshot of Sidebar 5.2 from ECC Essentials Book Description End: So that was gross motor... And we know how important... hands are... for our students. And... again, there is a sidebar in our ECC Essentials that I just love and it is sidebar 5.2 and it... it basically explains how usually an infant will learn how to... explore an object. And so... sometimes our kids ... [ Slide end: ] don't fully explore. They might do just a fast touch Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: they might do a push away... They might pick it up and throw it... But they don't always go through this sort of developmental pattern Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: that kids who can see ... Holly: Right. Ann: do with objects. And for this population, our learning media assessment, many times, is based on how they manipulate objects. How that what they're able to do with objects. Because they're not doing things with print and so we've got to look at how are they interacting with objects in their environment and if they're not, then that becomes what we want to see. That becomes‑‑ that should be their learning media that they're interacting with... objects. So think about... whether or not your students, if they're bringing it to their mouth and maybe they've stopped this exploratory pattern there, then you can look and see that they should be taking it back out and this‑ this again is based on... typical infants. But for our kids, they might take it out, move it, or check it in some way and then see how‑ how that feels... as well. And then they put it back in. So this just gives... us another way to talk with parents about how is your child interacting with objects. It's very important that your child interacts with objects. And that as the vision teacher, we are going to encourage that, we're going to use that, he needs practice, and you're modeling that and you're talking about that importance... that this develops hand skills that later will help him pick out clothes, his favorite clothes, to hold his spoon, to do all of those other daily living activities and then further into... Braille reading or... what‑ whatever- whatever... learning media the child finally does... And so we do have another video and... if‑ if you do not teach your- your... families anything in the birth to two [ Laughter ] Holly: [ Laughter ] Ann: please... please show them‑‑ demonstrate, model, encourage hand-under-hand use ... Because a lot of times we get kids who are five who won't touch anything. Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: Who... will not let anyone touch their hands... who are- are labeled tactually defens- defensive and really what it is, as Millie Smith says, they're just tactually avoidant because... people have been handling their hands way too much. So when you start talking about hand‑under‑hand with families, this is my very favorite video. And you can show it to them every lesson [ Laughter ] for... for a while. Holly: [ Laughter ] Ann: So let's... see this video. [ Video start: ] Speaker: How do we get her to use her hands? Speaker: Don't grab for her hand. Instead touch her arm. [Banging sounds] Mother: Do you feel that? Do you feel [Indiscernible]? Does it [Indiscernible]? Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Is that the sound I'm making? Do you want to help? Do you want to help? Dad: Look at that! Mother: Good job! Yeah! Good job! Teacher: [Indiscernible] Start doing something and just let her-- Dad: [ Laughter ] Mother: [ Laughter ] Teacher: [Indiscernible] [Banging sounds] Mother: Do you want to help? No? No? Do you want to help [indiscernible]? Teacher: [Indiscernible] Mother: You are [Indiscernible] to help. [Indiscernible] [ Laughter ] Mother: Good job! [ Video end: ] Ann: I love in that video how- how she takes to hand‑under‑hand, but I think the communication of her putting her hands under her arms ... Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: is- is so... it- it is like loo-- "Don't touch my hands." Holly: Yeah. It's very clear. Ann: And- and- So it's very, very clear ... We also wanted to talk with you about... a couple of... sites and our really one site- Wonder Baby- [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Video and web resources to show Content: Fine Motor • Wonder Baby http://www.wonderbaby.org/ • Wonder Baby Pinterest sites http://www.pinterest.com/wonderbabyorg/ Description End: and... then they also have a site on Pinterest where families can get a lot of good ideas, sensory learning, and that type of thing. So next we're going to... talk a little bit about self help ... [ Slide end: ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Domain: Self Help Content: • Eating, self-feeding, sensory play with food (jello, whipped cream, mashed potatoes) • Dressing classifying clothes with body parts, dressing: defined space • Toileting Description End: That domain. And we've talked about how... self help, the children are really learning how to move... within... and learning those things that they can do for themselves... The social emotional... is really where our early and later communication come in. [ Slide end: ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Domain: Social Emotional Content: • Smiling, outwardly showing recognition of voices • Early communication • Later communication • Literacy awareness Description End: It- it shows us smiling... it's‑ it's that interaction ... Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: piece again. And it's where our kids are going to enjoy hearing stories, doing... activities with mom and siblings... Again, showing... that doing that social emotional... I think at this time... Holly is going to ... [ Slide end: ] actually show us some hands‑on activities that... you could use within your practice... with babies. Chapter 3. Sensory Play & Exploration Holly: Yes. And... I wanted to give you some ideas. I know there's lots of new people in the field. And we've got a lot of books out that we didn't have 10 years ago, so we've got a lot of good resources but- and many of you have used these books in your course work. But, still, sometimes when we think about going out into people's homes or... caregiving environments, we can really be stumped on where to start. So I just wanted to share with you how I used to think about... what to do with children when I... began in the field as an itinerant teacher. I thought about doing activities with them and I would plan... several things that I was going to do during the home visit and a lot of them were repeated from one time to the next. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Activities Content: • sensory play and exploration • movement • communication/early literacy Description End: And I thought about three major categories. Sensory play and sensory exploration. So long ago when I first came into the field, we called that sensory stimulation, but we- [ Laughter ] we don't really think that way anymore because that sounds very passive, we don't want the kids to be passive. We want them to reach out and touch the objects and to interact with them. So sensory play is a big category and we can work on vision, touch, and... hearing. Movement is another big category and we can work on fine and gross motor and O&M... And communication and early literacy is another big category, so we can work on speech or sound production... on simple signs and gestures... on using... some symbols, object symbols or we can really start thinking about early literacy for some of our higher functioning children and be doing some things with books. [ Slide end: ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Activities Content: Correlations with the ECC areas Sensory play and exploration, compensatory skills, sensory efficiency, assistive technology, recreation & leisure Description End: ... Here's some correlations between these activities and the Expanded Core Curriculum area. So sensory play and exploration, this- this addresses... compensatory skills, sensory efficiency. It can- you can include assistive technology, this is a good place for assistive technology, and you can include recreation and leisure or just plain play. And... I would like to show you some objects that would encourage sensory play and exploration. [ Slide end: ] Okay. So let's start by looking at things that are very visual. These might be the kind of things that you would play with and show and interact with, with a young child who either had a cortical visual impairment or had a very significant visual impairment, but is not totally blind. And one of the things we really like is mylar... mylar pom poms are really nice because they... are reflective, so that's something that's very‑‑ an early... skill in vision development is to be alert to light sources or reflective things. They also have movement and so these are really dazzling, but... for kids with a really significant visual impairment, they're very- they're very good... I also have some... reflective beads and these are very visual. You can put them on a tray. I would leave them connected together, just because they can get into everything if you don't. But... they're also‑‑ they have a very interesting... texture and movement when you touch them. Mylar wrapping paper is really nice... to use, also. [Mylar crinkling sound] It has a good sound to it. It's highly reflective. You can often find mylar paper that has kind of holographic print in it like this one does and... you get also a very interesting feel to it... Reflective objects that are made out of metal, like cups and spoons and pots and pans, these are a lot of fun to play with. A lot of our kids-- we talk about this when we do active learning training-- a lot of our kids have a lot of contact with plastic objects, because a lot of toys are plastic, but... we really‑‑ I always like to look for objects that aren't plastic so that we can give them a variety of experiences. So metal cups and spoons and bowls and pots and pans are really a nice way to look for that- for that. Let me show you some texture things... For the kids who might be totally blind or have very low vision or if you just wants to encourage tactile exploration and fine motor movement in the hands... this is a scrubber. And it's the microfiber... yarn in it and it has a very distinctive feel. A lot of our kids don't like to feel plush items, so that might not be something that you want to start with. But it is very interesting and... it's something that you could put near a child and... just kind of encourage some touching. Another thing is a plastic scrubby... These are used... they're made for both washing dishes and using in the shower... So the shower ones... or the bathtub ones are usually very soft and they come in a lot of different colors. So that's a nice, soft thing to touch without it actually being plush. Many times our kids who have tactual avoidance behaviors... often are very interested in vibration. And like to touch things that- that vibrate or they'll interact with things that vibrate longer. I would... caution you to be careful with these kinds of objects and use them with supervision. You don't want to... take a vibrating... pad or something and put it on a child so that they can't get away from it. They- They need to be able to stop having contact with them because if they get... if they have too much tactile input through a vibrator, in some cases for a really severely compromised child... it may throw them into seizures, and we certainly don't want that. So use these things with... supervision and care and for, you know, relatively shorter periods of time. But if you're doing a home visit... these are some kinds of things that you can look at. Ann: [cough] Holly: And I also like to be sure... to be able to talk about with the parents where they can get these kind of items because they may see their child respond to it and really say, "Hey, where I-- where can I get that?"... This is a vibrating bug and I just got this at a drug store. But I've modified it by putting a battery interrupter and a switch on it. So if you have a more severely impaired child... this is something that they can activate. If it's not a child with a motor impairment, it's just a push button on/off right there on the little bug's nose. But... for a child who might not have that kind of finger isolation or be able to... brace the object and push the button, using... an adapter and switch is a good thing to do. But this really is just a mass market product that I got at a drug store. And then I've added the able net switch and... battery interrupter to it. When you push the switch, it vibrates, if I have it turned on. First you have to make sure that it's turned on and then activate the switch... I like to use these on a table, if it's a child who's in a wheelchair maybe they need to be sitting up for a little while... And not on the floor. It's a good thing to use on a wheelchair tray or a table... If the child is sitting on a resonance board without a lot of other objects around, it's really makes a lot of noise. So‑‑ and it's something that they can turn on and off themselves. Another vibrating toy, I had‑‑ and again, I just got this at a drug store, discount store. And this is a little cat and when I bought this... this plush kitty, they had about four different kinds of animals and I wanted the black and white one, plus I like cats. But I really wanted the black and white one because... visually it's very distinctive and easy to see. Now, he's got a switch on the box of his foot. If you thought that your child had some fine motor skills and... could activate the switch themselves, you could do that. Or you could just turn it on for them and let- put the ki- kitty down on the table and just let them explore the kitty. He is plush, he might be a little too much for some people... Some of our kids. But he's- he's kind of a nice vibrator. Okay. So that's an on/off switch. You can modify the switch by sewing a button or something like that over it. Or the battery, there's a little pouch in the animal's backside here where you can... take the batteries out and you can put a battery interrupter on it just like you did with the vibrating bug. And you could make its switch accessible that way. So here we get some technology in. Especially with vibrating and tactile things, it's a good... place to add some‑‑ vibration. Another item that I bring out often on trips is just a little bucket with some kind of beans or seeds or macaroni or something like that. And this one I put bird seed in because I thought this is the smallest thing that I can think of, not a choking hazard. So if the child grabs a handful and puts it in their mouth, it's- it's not going to hurt them... You probably would want to put larger objects in it, because these might be a choking hazard if you're not certain. But having... something like... macaroni or beans or small seeds and then putting objects in it like spoons and cups or if you have a theme that you're exploring and you want to do something a little bit different each month, you could have some little heart containers for Valentine's Day or little gift boxes for Christmas, and you can see this one is full of Easter eggs. So... those can be a lot of fun to explore and play around with. You can fill the eggs up. And just make a really big mess. Some parents don't like the big messes. I also, as a teacher of the visually impaired, I didn't have a lot of sound-producing items. So in the past few years, I've really started buying stuff that makes noise because I'm working with deafblind children and I want to know if they can localize the sound... We do the same kinds of things with sound that we do with vision. We look for awareness, just alertness, and seeing that they notice it, then turning toward a sound and then reaching for it and making the sound themselves. So I look for things like maracas. You have these small egg shakers. They- they have a different tone to them... Little tambourines. Just think about your child's... motor abilities and what they can do. We have a really nice toy store here in Austin called Toy Joy, so it's not your typical Toys R Us, but it has very different kinds of toys in it that are-- I don't know, I sort of think of them as more of the old fashioned toys and this... is just a shaker that makes some noise... Here's the kind that has the- the moo cow. [Mooing]. And these are a lot of fun. Ann: [cough] Holly: And I like this one because it's metal and I really think a lot about kids that stick their hands in their mouth and then they're touching the toys. If it's paper, if it's covered with paper, and you can't clean it with disinfectant and stuff, you really want to be aware of that kind of thing. And keep your eyes open, you can find all kinds of odd little things. And... These were all in the musical instrument department. Now for... kids that might just need some quiet, soothing music, this is not really‑‑ this is not really an object that's interactive, but some children... will be much calmer if they can hear some music and just kind of listen. This is something that you can sometimes find at electronics stores like Frys. In Austin we have a place called Discount Electronics and that's where I got this one. And it's a little amplifier you can put-- it was originally made for iPods, but I happen to have my phone in it right now. And it has batteries to amplify the sound instead of using headphones, because, I mean, you do want to work with your kids on tolerating headphones, but sometimes you just want to give them something interesting to do. And so I have some Raffi music [ Music ] on my... phone. I could put my phone in here. Zip it up and the sound comes out of the speakers. And so if it's a child who ... Singer: [singing] Did you see a whale with a coconut tail? Down by the bay. Down by the bay. [ Music stops] Holly: If it's a child who... maybe needs- need- needs music to help them go to sleep or to entertain them while they're sitting on the toilet [ Laughter ] Ann: [ Laughter ] Holly: or- or when they're sitting in a- a chair waiting for the rest of their family to... be ready to do something, this is a really nice... item to have. And let me give you just a couple of ideas about movement. Chapter 4. Activities and the ECC [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Activities Content: Correlations with the ECC areas • Movement, orientation & mobility, recreation & leisure, independent living • Communication/early literacy, social interaction, self determination, compensatory skills Description End: You may be a vision teacher or you may be an orientation and mobility specialist, but for all of our kids, whether they have additional disabilities or not, we often find the gross motor skills lag behind. Our children may be later to sit up, to lift their head, to reach out and explore objects, and here's some objects that can be helpful for you to encourage movement because ... [ Slide end: ] they encourage gross motor... movement. Here's a ball and it has a bell in it. And it's fairly smooth, it's a little bit soft, so it's not going to break and it's not going to hurt anybody if they fall on it or if it's thrown at anything. But... this is a nice one that will‑‑ you can do some ball rolling and play with. And... since it is a sounds source, can you move it a little bit out of reach and encourage the child to reach and- and explore it. Other things that can be really helpful are things like scarves, larger items, they're nice and soft. But you can also... tie them on to things and- and pull... toys ... Having a... something large that's black and white or just black and putting high contrast items against it can be very helpful to help highlight... the object that you're encouraging the child to see. I know that your adaptive PE teacher and your OTs and PTs probably have a lot more ideas about activities to do that are not specifically therapy activities, but that encourage play and-- with gross motor movement. So you might want to get together with them as well... Another thing to think about is... communication and early literacy. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Activities Content: Correlations with the ECC areas • Movement, orientation & mobility, recreation & leisure, independent living • Communication/early literacy, social interaction, self determination, compensatory skills Description End: We do a lot of... talk about... tactile symbols and object symbols and... but also for our higher functioning kids, and even for those who don't have language yet, we want to look at- at introducing and having books as a part of- of our play and our sessions... early in our experiences. [ Slide end: ] So let's take a look at the next slide, activity play and... and exploration. When we... play with our sensory objects, like [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Activities: Sensory Play and Exploration Content: • Visual regard, attending, tracking • Eye-hand coordination • T actual exploration • Sound localization, listening • Cause-effect play Description End: our mylar pom‑pom, we're looking for things like visual regard, which is awareness... visual attending. So, looking directly at an object and then tracking... we look at eye‑hand coordination, we can use these objects to encourage eye‑hand coordination; tactual exploration; sound localization and listening; and cause‑effect play. Because if you pat on it, it might make noise or it might respond by vibrating when you... press a switch... For movement on the next slide, we're‑ we- [ Slide end: ] [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Activities: Movement Content: • Head control, trunk control, “tummy time” • Sitting, pushing up on all fours, creeping, crawling • Walking, exploring • Moving toward a sound source or visually interesting toy • Encouraging alternatives to repetitive movement activities (self-stimulation) Description End: our objects that we have like the ball and the scarf, these are things that we can use to encourage head lifting, to encourage work on trunk control, to kind of distract our young children during their tummy time. Because a lot of them really don't tolerate being on their tummy very well if they're not used to it... There're also good things using the balls and the larger objects are good things to use when the child is sitting to encourage them to continue sitting up... pushing up on all fours and then creeping and crawling and once kids are starting to walk... having‑ having balls and larger objects to... follow and explore and interact with are a good thing to bring in... Also, you can encourage something like the bell ball and can encourage them to move toward a sound or to locate where the ball is. And... also, doing these kind of movement activities, encouraging the children to sit up and explore their environment more, if- if you have little ones who are doing a lot of self stimulation, introducing new objects and new activities can help... provide them with an alternative to some of those self-stimulatory behaviors and interrupt some of the self-stimulatory behaviors. At this very young age, many times our children are engaging in these repetitive movement behaviors simply because they don't have a lot of play skills and they don't have a lot of other ways to use their hands or use their bodies. [ Slide end: ] Let me show you a couple of modified books. Some of these are-- I don't know, maybe even out of print now. But... I like to look for... paperback books and here is one‑‑ Here Are My Hands and it's done by Bill Martin and John Archambault, which are the same people that wrote the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. And it's got some... nice rhythmic... words and... images in it. And if you buy a... paperback like this-- for one thing they're less expensive. Then you can laminate it and you can add Braille to it, run it through the Braille writer, which is what I've done here. And I've- and wherever there's words I've added Braille to it. And on some of the pages‑‑ now some of this has come out, but on some of the pages I added some tactile items that can... that are related to what the words say. So at the beginning, "Here are my hands for catching and throwing" and here's some hands. "Here are my feet for stopping and going. Here is my head for thinking and knowing. Here is my nose for smelling and blowing." I've actually got a little scratch and sniff picture here. "Here are my eyes for seeing and crying." And I have little googly eyes. So when I'm thinking about books to read with children, I really like... to start with books about body parts because we all have bodies and we need to learn about our bodies and what's up and down and top and bottom... I like to do some books about counting and the alphabet. If they have a little bit more language. And I like to use books that are about seasonal... activities because then I can reach around to what they've got in their living room and say, "Look, it's- it's almost Halloween... let's read about pumpkins." And you can really put your hands on the real pumpkin and... read the book about planting and growing pumpkins. So there's one that's a seasonal book and here's one that's a counting book. A nice thing about the counting books is that it's pretty easy to modify them and give them objects to count. And this one has holes in it for the eyes. And again, it's very rhythmic, rhyming text. "Two brightly colored toucans, what very peculiar birds! They can see as well as you can, but their beaks are quite absurd." And this goes all the way up to 10. Books about color for kids who have vision... Books about shapes who either have vision or don't have vision. Those are all really good books to build onto later academic learning or if maybe academic learning is not something that you're sure about, still the shared reading time and having a story and an activity that's social- a social experience with an adult, is... an enjoyable thing that should be part of all our children's lives. I think that's about it for what I wanted to say about activities, so let's let Ann talk about families and how to... share this with our families and encourage family members to... participate in... learning with our children. Chapter 5. Work within Family's Routine Ann:... One of the things that I wanted to share about families is that it's very important for us to work within the family routine... What is the family's routine? And- and we have different worksheets that you can just ask the mom, "Could you tell me about your day?" Mom or grandmother or caregiver. And it could be as simple as "Well, we get up, I change the diaper, I get the- his bottle ready, we- we have time... a little bit of time and then the rest of the family gets up." And so you just write down what mom says and then you... think about, "Okay... we are‑‑ we're talking about... where does‑‑ you know, my child only has vision... on one‑ on one side" or- or- or during your functional, you think, "Well, he really just has this right upper field. So where can I work on that? Where can we expand that field? Where can we teach... him to perhaps move his head so that he's... looking at objects?" And so if they have a designated bath time and the‑ the child enjoys the bath, then you can talk with Mom about... "Okay, then let's‑‑ let's really... when we're doing bath time, let's make sure that there's a bright‑‑ he has a brightly colored wash cloth and present that wash cloth... in that right upper field and then- then move it down and as you're doing your bath, you can always... sing a little song and perhaps it is about body parts or- or other things." So you want to... model for Mom some of the things that can happen within their daily routine that will perhaps... be the same as you bringing... an object in and working with that right upper field and- and... having... the‑ the baby start to look there but as you're moving slowly or- or perhaps you're doing the... a ball and you're bringing it up and down, that the child gets that in their line of vision and then‑ and then follows it. But then what you're wanting the family to do is to... practice that within their daily routine. It makes it easier, but it also helps the child understand the steps of bath time. So... we want to use the materials in the home when available, but that‑‑ [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: Working with Families Content: • Program with family routines (routines based activity sheet) • Use familiar materials in the home when possible • Empower the parents (parent works with child) Description End: but we're not restricted from bringing in... materials. But it- it helps the family if we can, for instance, when Holly was talking about not wanting to use just plastic. Kitchen materials are always very easy to use. They- You have metal... bowls and pans and- and wooden spoons and all of those kinds of things. [clears throat] And sometimes as teachers, we come in ready to teach. But what‑‑ what we really‑‑ we want to set up a relationship with our families and we want to really... empower them and- and... praise them on the good job that they're‑‑ on just being‑‑ being parents and- and encourage them to be parents. Holly: Mmm! [ Slide end: ] Ann: And that the things that they are doing, the language that they're providing, the activities that they're providing are‑ are what is teaching the child and- and how the child is learning. So it's important to- to really not only think about building a relationship with the baby, but to also build a relationship within that family. And to remember that being a good listener... is sometimes the most important part of your job. Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: Really hearing what the‑ the- the family is asking and not jumping in with a fix. "Oh, you have‑‑ you know, you're worried about him walking. Well, let's fix that. Let's, you know, do this or do that." Because sometimes the conversation may move to a totally different object. To a totally different topic. So remember that a big part of our... responsibility as a vision teacher going into a home is to empower families, to model, to... to not have unrealistic expectations... This is not a classroom. This is‑‑ this is a family's home. And that they're‑‑ they are not teachers. They are not-- most of the time they are not educators and it is important for us to model the pacing, to make it fun. Holly: Mm hmm. Ann: When we go in to see the family that we are showing that we really enjoy working with their child. Because every parent... wants to see other people love their children, so... and- and to share this whole playful attitude, that it is not something that they have to constantly be a teacher or a social worker or- or- Holly: Right. Ann: all of these other roles, but that it can be fun. This child you have, that came into the world... is a beautiful, wonderful child and can enjoy the play and the interaction... and- and babies are fun. So when you go into- to a- a home... have fun. I hope that some of the websites that we have shared with you, the resources that are in our resource list, will help you in... programming for our younger children, birth through... four or five. So, thank you for listening today... And if you have any questions, ask on the chat. Or... contact us... here at The School for the Blind. Holly: Thank you for tuning in, everybody. And... feel free to email us if you have questions as well. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Title: ECC for Early Childhood Content: 3:00-4:00 PM January 14, 2016 Presented by Ann Rash, TVI, M.S., Early Childhood Consultant rasha@tsbvi.edu Holly Cooper, TVI, Ph.D., Early Childhood Consultant cooperh@tsbvi.edu TSBVI Outreach Programs Description End: [ Slide end: ] [Silence]