A commenter presented me with a challenge yesterday:
I realize that your son is still small but I was wondering if you had heard any ideas for Halloween games for the visually impaired? I'm in charge of my company's Halloween party and 80% of our employees are visually impaired or blind.
The only game we can agree on is telling a story and passing boxes around with food pretending they are body parts like peeled grapes for eyes. If you have any ideas that would be great. Even if they are childish it doesn't matter, they just want to be included. Thank you :) -Posted on Thinking about Halloween!Well, what do you think? Can we come up with some ideas? I think so. Halloween is my favorite holiday- it's pure fun and it's the perfect opportunity to get creative. I'm thinking of games that would be good for adults and kids. Let's start adapting!
Halloween Games:
- Name that Halloween candy - By taste only - no sight. There are so many different types of candy.
- Halloween Wordscramble - you can hand them out in print and Braille. Use a timer to make it more challenging for adults.
- Pumpkin carving contest. For children you could have a pumpkin cleaning race and then let adults carve the pumpkins after. This would be funny and good tactile work for kids.
- Guess how many candy corn are in a jar. - Let people shake the jar and feel the candy corn inside.
- Scavenger hunt in the dark - create mixed teams of blind and sighted people. Put the clues in Braille so the blind team members are a vital part of the team.
- Halloween Movie & TV trivia
- Match the movie quote to the movie ( Scary movies only, obviously - This is why we need good audio description. Because movies and TV are part of our culture.)
Halloween Costumes
My love for Halloween is no secret. It think it's a great time for families to get creative and have fun together. You can have fun making decorations for your house or creating costumes.
Tom's first costume was store bought because we had other things on our mind. You know, like learning to be a parent, learning how to take care of a child post surgery, juggling a bunch of doctor/specialist appointments, learning about blindness, and beginning Early Intervention services.
We were a little busy back then, but things have slowed down considerably and now we are pretty much living life like other parents of preschoolers. We just do things a little differently!
Tom's Costume List:
1st Halloween - Dinosaur
2nd Halloween - Gnome
3rd Halloween - Lumberjack
4th Halloween -
???
???
We don't do Halloween (my kids are in Catholic school, so they dress up as saints for All Saints day on Nov. 1!) but I did see a cute homemade Lego piece costume that was made from a box and red solo cups. Adapting that, Thomas could be a Braille cell!
ReplyDeleteOur son Noah (now 16 months and also visually impaired) was that same green dinosaur for his first Halloween. Yeah, we too were caught up in the logistics of life and cheated and bought the costume from Babies-R-Us. It was darn cute though so no regrets. He's going to be a monkey this year. I have the costume but have to figure out how to get the tail to stay curled up. Nice creativity with the games.
ReplyDeleteI think he would make a cute Franklin the turtle green jogging suit red ball cap yellow backpack and a chest plate for a turtle
ReplyDelete1) The braille cell is bleeping brilliant. I would totally go for the braille cell if you think he'll do it! He could be a "T"!
ReplyDelete2) Try wire or a pipe cleaner. You could thread it through the tail. You could also try wetting it down, curling it tightly, and tying/pinning it that way until it dries.
3) Halloween Games:
* I think bobbing for apples is hard regardless of how well you see--I'm not sure that eyesight's really a bonus on that one.
* They did a game on a sensory table at CCVI for the open house where the table was full of pasta with little prizes in it--shiny bead necklaces, finger puppets, little plastic animals and the like. If you've got a big box, you could always fill it with packing peanuts and toss some prizes in it. If you want, put a cover on it with hand/arm holes so the sighted employees don't have an advantage.
* "Stick your hand in and touch this" has always been popular at Halloween, whether you have people stick their hands blindly into a dark box or blindfold them. You can do cold wet noodles for worms, peeled grapes for eyeballs--the sky's the limit. I think part of it is telling them they're gettin ready to touch X disgusting thing, but it's been a while (and I never ran that one personally).
* Maybe ID that scary noise, kind of like the movie quotes? You could have wolf howls, bugs scuttling, snakes hissing, the theme from the X Files, etc. See who could guess the most out of 10 for a prize (or more than 10).