Christmas is a time of joy, excitement, and togetherness. For blind and visually impaired children, the holidays can be just as magical with a little extra thought and preparation. By considering sensory experiences beyond sight, we can help create lasting memories and ensure that every child can fully enjoy the festive season.

Halloween is a time for fun, creativity, and community, but it can present unique challenges for children with blindness or low vision. However, with some thoughtful planning and adaptation, families can ensure that all children have a joyful and inclusive Halloween experience.

Reading to your child from a young age can start the interest and love of reading. Reading books with braille overlays, labeling your child’s items with Braille, and teaching them to use their fingers to feel from left to right are all ways to introduce Braille long before your child is expected to read.

Getting your child used to using their fingers to explore tactile pictures and writing is a good way to expose them to their ABC’s and prep for braille.

Bowling is a fun activity for the whole family that can be made accessible with just a little bit of preparation beforehand and some inexpensive physical adaptations!

Planting an herb garden is a wonderful, sensory activity to do with your child. You can make your fairy garden with flowers and herbs, but for this activity we will focus on herbs. Along with all the different scents and textures, herbs also offer a variety of tastes that can be use in recipes. A fairy garden can be for the outdoors or indoors, in a fancy flowerpot or a simple box. The ideas are endless!

This is an easy and fun activity that can be changed up depending on the items you have handy or to support a holiday/seasonal theme. When you give your child a chance to explore items it offers them access to interesting textures, engaging features, and the opportunity to compare. (i.e.: soft/hard, cold/warm, bumpy/smooth, wet/dry. Encouraging the use of all different types of hand skills also helps build hand and finger strength, as well as coordination.

This activity is not only a ton of fun, but it also supports and builds tactile awareness, vision stimulation, small motor skills, social skills, and pre-Braille skills.

Ice skating is a motor skill that will last a lifetime. It is a confidence booster and a way to promote balance and core strengths that will help in many sport activities. School classes often go skating as a group. For a young or older adult, it is a physical activity that is social in nature, especially in Canada. It can take place outdoors on a rink, lake or pond and of course indoors.

There are many activities that children can do outside in the snow or on a frozen pond or backyard rink. One is sliding in some form or another. You do not need a fancy toboggan to enjoy the fun of skimming downhill on fresh snow or slipping and sliding on a frozen patch of water.

There is no one right way to build a fort. Get creative and use the resources you have available in your home to make a fort that works for you and your child. Anything from sheets to stringing lights under a bunk bed, the idea is to have fun!

Fall and the holiday season is always one filled with excitement, no matter your age. There are changes to the sounds we hear, the colours we see, and the morning air feels crisp on our cheeks. This is a fun time for embracing colourful crunchy leaves, smooth chestnuts, and spiky pinecones. This easy-to-follow recipe to make homemade holiday ornaments offers a fun activity as well as helps engage with some of the sensory experiences of the holidays!

Sound and touch can be encountered in quite a random way for children who have low vision or blindness and particularly for those who are deafblind or have motor and medical complications. A resonance board can provide a way of organising sound out of chaos in a very simple way by providing sound and vibrations transferred through the board, (think of a large drum skin).

Make your own homemade tambourine using household items around the home, with materials such as paper plate or aluminum pie pans, scissors, bells, bottle caps and a bit of string or twist ties to attach the bells.

Reading with your child is a special time to bond and connect with them. Holding them in your arms with a book is a wonderful time to share stories and rhymes and sets them up for the enjoyment of reading for the years to come. Reading to your child helps them with learning new vocabulary and concepts, problem solving, building memory and learning about the meaning of things.

There are many ways to Rock ‘n Roll and many skills that can be developed while doing so! Think about what can of fun music/ songs you can listen to while bouncing, balancing, jumping and dancing with your toddler.

Have you ever considered that you can make music out of household items? These activities will target the development and refinement of going from making noise to producing simple music. Along the way your child will learn about concepts like loud/quiet, hard/soft, fast/slow, high pitch/low pitch and making or copying rhythm and simple melodies.

Many young children with visual impairments enjoy engaging with their parents in fun games. Playing a fun game of Simon Says can help to reinforce directional concepts in relation to the child’s body and develop active listening skills. The purpose of this activity is to create opportunities for a child to learn about purposeful movement and directions in relation to their body parts.

Scavenger hunts can be fun and provide an opportunity for exploration and movement. A scavenger hunt focused on textures can help with concept development and sensory skills. Hunting for and discriminating characteristics of objects, (size, texture, temperature, weight) can best be done by helping the child to use her/his hands in a structured search and exploration approach i.e. feeling an object from top to bottom, left to right, front side - back side.

Peekaboo is a popular game among babies and toddlers! One great thing about peekaboo is there are lots of variations you can do to tailor it to your child’s abilities! Peekaboo is also great because it helps your child develop the understanding that people and things still exist when you cannot see/hear/touch them. Here are some suggestions on ways to play peekaboo.

Bath time can be a time of fun, learning and relaxation. Here are a few ideas to make bath time an event to look forward to. As always please do not leave children unattended in the tub and use the floor as a change surface.