Including Visually Impaired Children Into Pre-School Activity Groups

At Musical Minis we realise that every child is unique and will benefit from the Musical Minis programme in a way that fits in with its ability, age and stage of development. The programme is child centred and allows the child to develop at a pace suitable to that individual child.

The Musical Minis programme caters for children from birth to school age and has mixed aged classes. Each child takes from the programme what is suitable for it at that stage of its development. The programme is all inclusive and children of all abilities and cultures can join in. For these reasons we welcome children with special needs and medical conditions as we know they will benefit from attending.

As long as the class leader has an idea of the child's needs they can make sure that the programme can support that individual. As you may know, my youngest child, Emily, is severely longsighted - you can read about how we found out here. At groups like Musical Minis, it was important that she was supported in a way that she knew what was happening so that she felt safe and confident with her surroundings. We have quite a few children who attend Musical Minis with various levels of vision.

The following is a list of general comments and advice, from Helen Davies, a specialist teacher of the visually impaired in Glamorgan, for including a visually impaired child into an activity group like Musical Minis. Obviously this advice would need to be tailored to fit in with the child and the amount of vision the child has.

1. Tell the child who you are (until they have learnt to recognise your voice) and remember to tell the child when you are leaving.

2. Use the child’s name when asking questions.

3. Describe actions or requirements verbally rather than saying “like this” or demonstrating visually if possible e.g. Say “put your hands on your head”, rather than just put them on your head and wait for the child to copy.

4. Try to be precise in the language you use e.g. It is better to say “put it on the floor” rather than “put it over there.”

5. Try to give a verbal warning before you do something that makes a loud noise – i.e. tell the child you are going to put the instruments on the floor before you do it.

6. Do not be afraid to use words and phrases relating to “looking”, such as “look at me”. They are all part of everyday language and severely visually impaired children use their ears and hands to “see”. Also talking about colour is not a problem, severely visually impaired children need to know what colour the grass is although they may not fully know what this means. They usually learn to relate colours to an associated object.

7. Expect that a severely visually impaired child may react differently to new experiences as without vision they cannot fully understand what is happening until they have experienced it a number of times.

8. The leader or Mum will need to explain to a severely visually impaired child what is going on around them, i.e. what other children are doing, what is about to happen, what the noise is to help them understand and make connections.

9. Actions will need to be physically demonstrated to a severely visually impaired child but they will probably choose to just listen rather than join in for longer than a sighted child.

Comments

[Jessica king]

My son is visually impaired and attends musical minis South Wales with Jo and Kate.
The class has helped him incredibly with his confidence around other children and noisy situations We look forward to it every week.
I am so grateful to Jo and her team for being aware of Ethan's particular needs and putting them into place within the session. I would highly recommend musical mini's for any child with visual impairment.