Multi-sensory activities for a baby or child who is blind with additional needs
Babies with low vision or blindness and additional needs have unique learning needs. Understanding these needs helps parents and carers to develop rewarding activities to enhance all the child's senses.
Before any of these activities, tell your child what you are going to do. As you do the activity, watch for their responses to see if the activity needs adjusting. Afterwards, talk to your child about what happened.
Contact your Vision Australia children's service specialist for more assistance adapting these activities to your child's level of vision and play.
Helping your child to understand how their body and the environment works can be a delightful experience - for you and the child you are caring for.
Developing body awareness
- Cuddle and carry your child while talking. Describe everything that is happening around you both.
- Vary your child's experience of movement as much as possible by bouncing, swaying, rocking.
- Blow "raspberries" on all parts of their body.
- Tickle the child's body all over.
- Brush all over the child's body using a soft brush.
- Massage your child's body with scented oil. Pull, push, squeeze and rub gently as you massage.
- Rub talcum powder on the whole body.
- Lay the child on the floor with no socks and minimal clothing. Vary the surface on which you place them. Try carpet, grass, lambskin, water.
- Brush over the child's hands and body with a variety of materials such as velvet, sponge, feathers, talc.
- Use vibrating massagers or vibrating toys to move along the child's hands, feet, arms and head.
- Swing the child gently in a hammock or blanket.
- Carry the child in a backpack or papoose.
- Lay your child in a ball pool or box sounded by soft balloons, shredded paper, leaves, shredded paper.
- Lay the child on a waterbed for safe movement.
- Use a supportive swing. Vary the speed of movement.
- Sing to your child while touching and naming the body parts you touch.
Encouraging Hand Awareness
- Massage your child's hands with lotion or oil.
- Blow on your child's hands and bring them to your face. Blow raspberries
- Brush a variety of textures on the child's hands such as sponge, feathers, or food such as honey or vegemite.
- Shaking the child's arm from the elbow or stroking the back of the arm or forearm will relax their hands.
- Tickle their hands while singing "Round the Garden".
- Hang from a play frame objects that vary in texture and sound. Only two at a time. Try using a light wind chime, CDs, Christmas balls, slinky springs, balloons. Place the frame close to your child so any movement from them will result in movement of the objects.
- Use a battery operated toothbrush to massage the child's hands.
- Develop messy play with shaving cream, pudding mix, pasta.
- Hide toys for the child to find within a shallow tray of rice, sorghum or sand. Lay them on their tummy so reaching into the tray is easier.
- Make tactile books with different textures glued to each page.
- Fill rubber gloves with cornflour, rice, beans, water.
Smell and taste
- Using the senses of smell and taste can provide information that helps your child understand where they are and what is happening.
- Use a small touch of food on the lip to signal the beginning of mealtime.
- Allow the child to smell lotion prior to being massaged.
- Use the same scent each time on a favourite toy before playing with it.
- Use oil burners with a particular essence to identify each room in the house.
- Use the same soap or lotion each bath time.
- Create a garden with distinct scents and textures. For example lavender, rose, jasmine, gardenia and herbs such as lemon thyme and basil.
Sound
- Explain the sounds your child hears.
- Play music at particular times of day or for particular activities.
- Sing songs that teach body parts and describe body movements.
- Use sound to identify specific locations and routines. For example, a mobile near a table and chairs used outdoors, a musical toy only played at sleep time, or at the change table.
- Sounds can be used to motivate the child to reach. For example, film canisters made into sound shakers, scrunch bags, percussion instruments, wrist bells, threaded cotton reels. These can be hung from a baby frame or placed on the tray of the child's chair within easy reach.
Light perception
- Use torches, lights, shiny mirrors, CD's.
- Put overhead transparencies onto a light box.
- Use Lava and fibre optic lamps.
- Shine a light on holographic paper.
- Suspend a mirror ball so it can reflect light.
- Use Christmas lights, tinsel, Christmas balls.
- Add black patterns to a night light.
Contact us
Call: 1300 84 74 66
TTY: 02 9334 3260
Fax: 02 9747 5993
Website: www.visionaustralia.org
Street Address (State Head Offices)
NSW and ACT: 4 Mitchell Street, Enfield NSW 2136
Queensland: 373 Old Cleveland Road, Coorparoo Qld 4151
Victoria: 454 Glenferrie Road, Kooyong Vic 3144
Vision Australia is a living partnership between people who are blind, sighted or have low vision. We are united by our passion that in the future people who are blind or have low vision will have access to and fully participate in every part of life they choose.
This page last updated: 20 February 2007