We are kicking off the summer season with a roundup of items to help you make the most of activities, events, and just plain old ideas that can be fun. We are excited to be co-hosting a Summer Blog Party with WonderBaby. Bloggers, please join in by writing about your summer plans and sending us the links. We will share all the posts and links with families.
From FamilyConnect you can sign up with FamilyConnect to get alerts as cool activities and camps are added to the calendar.
Be sure to explore your own communities’ events and summer camp options.
Follow our blogs as guest bloggers will be adding new ideas and stories throughout the summer:
- Finding fun things to do when you are visually impaired
- Track the FamilyConnect blog
- Summer is here: now what?
- Follow Emily’s blog
Some oldies but goodies from FamilyConnect
Orientation and mobility-themed summertime fun
- Incorporate orientation and mobility skills into summertime fun
- O&M activities at home for your young child who is blind
- Grade school-age O&M activities for children who are blind or visually impaired
Planning ahead to get the most out of summer activities
- Tips for going someplace new with your blind or visually impaired child
- Experiencing the world firsthand: creating learning opportunities for children who are blind or visually impaired
Are you attending this summer’s NAPVI conference?
- Check out the full program for the NAPVI International Family Conference
- The Sandy’s View blogger talks about their experience with summertime and sport activities, and encourages everyone to come to the NAPVI conference
Ideas from WonderBaby
- 36 Fun Summer Activities for Kids Who are Blind or Multiply Disabled
- Surf Camp for Blind Kids—Indo Jax Surf School’s Visually Impaired Summer Camp takes place at Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina for a week each July.The camp gets bigger every year and includes sighted siblings as well.
Join the Blog Party! Here Are More Summer Tips From Other Parents
Are you planning any new activities or experiences for your blind child this summer? How are you preparing? Any advice to share with other parents? Let us know! FamilyConnect and WonderBaby.org are inviting bloggers to write about their summer plans. Just send us a link to your post and we’ll share it!
- Road Trip! 20 Ways to Keep Your Blind Child Entertained on a Long Car Drive—How’s your child in the car? Some kids hate traveling and some have mixed feelings (I know one little girl who’s fine as long as the car is moving, but freaks out when it stops…her mom HATES stop lights!). Here’s some great advice on how to keep a child who is blind entertained on a long trip.
- Summer Doings—What do you do to stay busy in the summer? Erin and her family fill the long, lazy days with shopping, ice cream, tea parties, bikes and a slip-n-slide!
- Kurios, Lego-Splosion and Other Summer Happenings— We’ve been in the throes of summer here lately — the temperatures heated up, and we’ve been enjoying the long days and warm weather. Days and weekends are full of swim practice and swim meets, birthday parties, playtime with friends, and keeping cool in the basement.
- Traveling With a Child Who Is Visually Impaired: It’s All About the Journey—Susan, an avid RV-er, writes about how to prepare so you can enjoy your summer travels. Make lists and prepare ahead of time. Doing a little at a time is easier than doing it all at the last minute.
- The Emerging Risk-Taker—Emily writes, “As much as we wanted to step in and “teach” him about the ocean…we let him teach himself. He quickly learned the pattern of the waves, where to find dry sand, and where to find the ocean spray. He walked back and forth, and up and down the beach…100% independent.”
- Ideas to Engage Students with Significant Multiple Disabilities in Activities During the Summer Holidays—Summer activities can be a struggle to when it is too hot to go outside. It can be helpful to make the long summer days enjoyable by planning a daily activity for the week. For example, Mondays are sensory days, Tuesdays are art, Wednesdays are literacy, Thursdays are Music and Fridays are toy days.
- The Day I Signed Up My Daughter for Baseball—Have you considered enrolling your child with visual impairments in a sports program, whether inclusive or distinguished specifically as “special needs”? We did and I’m so happy with our decision!
- Tommy’s Mainstream Daycare Experience from the blog Thomas Marshall Does It All
- What is tyical Summer When you’re an Atypical Family? This blog from the Schnaderbeck family that shares their summer adventures over the years.