by Emma Willibey

A child squeals with delight as she finds an egg hidden in the grass. However, rather than reaching inside for candy, the child flicks the egg’s “off” switch.

“[The Beeper Egg Hunt] brings more tears to the parents’ eyes, because we never thought our child could do the simplest thing as hunt an Easter egg,” Dalli McSpadden, mother of four-year-old Paisley, said.

For over 20 years, the Children’s Center for the Visually Impaired (CCVI), which provides classes for visually-impaired youths from infanthood to age 8, has held an annual Easter egg hunt with beeping eggs. This year, about 80 students and parents visited Loose Park April 1 to promote this non-visual celebration of Easter.

“An Easter egg hunt is such a visual holiday event, and that’s something our kids really can’t participate in,” CCVI marketing/communications manager Traci Todd Murphy said.

The event started with the help of the AT&T Pioneers, who invented the beeping eggs. Today, the Pioneers and the Kansas City Bomb Squad deliver the beeper eggs, with the Pioneers also providing the students stuffed bunnies.

“As long as the AT&T Pioneers are willing to help us, I know we’ll be [at Loose Park] every spring, if we can be,” Murphy said.

Despite lengthy preparation, Murphy said the hunt is over within an hour. This year’s event began at 10:15 a.m., with an initial hunt for the two- to three-year-olds in classrooms 1 to 3 of CCVI’s six classrooms. These children spent about 20 minutes hunting for eggs. Around 10:45 a.m., older children in classrooms 4 to 6 arrived for a second hunt, finishing in roughly 10 minutes.

According to Murphy, every visually-impaired child navigates the park with a therapist’s help.

“It’s kind of rough terrain, and maneuvering that is pretty difficult,” Murphy said.

CCVI also arranges the eggs in a manner that challenges students without leaving the hunt impossible. While eggs are strewn throughout the grass, none appear in trees or hard-to-find holes. Some eggs sit close to the starting point, while others rest at a distance, a setup that acknowledges students’ varying physical abilities.

“Kids who can run have to go for eggs far away,” McSpadden said. “Kids who can walk [go in the] middle range, [and kids with] wheelchairs and walkers [stay] close.”

According to McSpadden, this level of care is typical of CCVI, which serves children within a 150-mile radius of Kansas City. McSpadden’s family became involved with CCVI when three-year-old Paisley entered the infant program. In this program, an infant team (including an occupational therapist that assists with daily lifestyle skills, a physical therapist and a teacher of the visually impaired, or TVI) provides in-home guidance to the child and parents.  Specifically, McSpadden said the infant team urges parents to note strengths in the child’s vision.

“Does your child reach for the green block or red block?” McSpadden asked, giving an example of a question a TVI may ask a parent. “The teacher really kind of fills out the right questions to ask the parents to know how to teach the child. If [the] child [is] red-dominant … on the very edge of the stair, you would spray-paint red. And, when there’s no more red, you’re on an even surface.”

According to Murphy, CCVI also provides an outreach program, in which therapists help students (typically five- to seven-year-olds) who have left CCVI transition into their home school districts.

“[The student’s school does not] have a Braille instructor,” Murphy said of a child in the outreach program who attends school in the Harrisonville Cass R-IX School District. “[We] have an outreach teacher who helps her with those skills and also helps her teacher, so her teacher can help her in the classroom as well.”

CCVI’s third option is the center-based program, in which students learn in a “typical preschool classroom,” Murphy said. However, CCVI’s classrooms include several unique features. For example, McSpadden said the teachers emphasize tactile learning with “feel games” and “feel books.”

“If I talk about a bunny rabbit, over the bunny rabbit’s face, I would put a piece of fur so [the visually-impaired child] understands what a bunny rabbit feels like,” McSpadden said.

In addition, McSpadden said CCVI’s classrooms have a strong presence of volunteers and assistant teachers.

“We have volunteers in every classroom every day of the week,” Murphy said.

Class of 2002 alumna Beth Haden, now on CCVI’s board of directors, joined this volunteer network upon choosing CCVI as her junior/senior service project agency.

“I was really impressed with everything that they’re doing,” Haden said of her initial assessment of CCVI. “So much of what you learn when you’re little is watching what your parents do. If you can’t do that, you’re at a disadvantage.”

Haden returned to CCVI throughout her summers in college and, after returning to Kansas City, eventually became co-chair of the institution’s annual Trolley Run. The Trolley Run is the nation’s largest 4-mile race, Haden said, and  participants at the April 26 event included families of CCVI students, employees of corporate sponsors, Brookside residents and runners from other regions of the country.

“[Many people] look forward to the last weekend in April,” Haden said. “They know it’s Trolley Run weekend.”

While Haden’s main responsibilities include managing sign-ups and securing sponsors, she said the most rewarding part of her job is watching the kids’ race at Mill Creek Park, an event following the main run. Like the Beeper Egg Hunt, the run allows CCVI students to perform a stimulating childhood activity despite their visual impairments.

“[The kids’ run is] where a lot of the students are able to participate,” Haden said. “[You] get to see them competing in something alongside sighted kids—[the kids’ run is] not just restricted to CCVI kids. That’s my favorite part, seeing the kids run. They’re all so excited.”

Tooling around

Visually-impaired students may need school supplies adapted to their loss of sight. Below are a few devices found in classrooms like those at CCVI.

• Large-print classroom calendars with labels in print and Braille
• EMI Nite-Writer Pens, which include a spotlight to illuminate the space where the child is writing
• Reading stands for placing books at a convenient position
• Electronic magnifiers, which can increase the print of reading materials up to 12 times the original size
  • These magnifiers are available as sheets to hold over reading material, screens to attach to reading material, stands to place in front of reading material and glasses.
• Video magnifiers (CCTVs) for higher magnification of material
  • A CCTV looks like a small television, with a space below the monitor on which to place a chart or map. A camera under the monitor projects the material up to 60 times its original size

Source: Assistive Technology Training Online