We are giving you some easy White Cane Day activities. I know you're on your drive between students so take a listen and grab some great ideas that will be so easy you can implement them today. 

Transcript of the Episode:

Oh my gosh, friend, I cannot believe it's already October. I was sitting outside earlier in Texas, it's like 70s in the morning, and definitely gets up into the 90s in the afternoon; and I had a sweater on my coffee cup because it just comes with a little sweater. It's a really cute thing to do during this time of year. And I am just loving being outside in this weather right now. October has so many beautiful things going on. For one Blindness Awareness Month, which I know we all love, and our favourite White Cane Day. Now White Cane Day can sometimes be a little stressful if you're planning a lot for it. Or if you have a big caseload, and you have to do small things with each student, it can be a lot.

Today, we've got some easy to White Cane Day activities for you to take the stress off of it. And another really cool thing about October is that A Step Forward is two years old, two years old. Oh my gosh, it feels like, feels like we're getting ready to run. And we're still getting our feet under us. And that rocket ship is just taking off. Some ways it feels like this is just only the beginning. And in others, I look back and I see just how far we've come as a community. This community is one of the greatest in the world. There are people from all over the world, all dedicated to helping people with visual impairments lead their most successful, independent and fulfilling lives. We all have different perspectives. And we all have different tools that we use in our tool belt at different times. And I think that that's part of what makes us so unique and so beautiful, is that we get to all lean on each other and learn from one another. without the ability to have people to help us think bigger, reach higher, and have some friends that keep our heads on our shoulders, depending on what you need. We'd be out swimming all alone in the ocean most of the time. And it already feels that way if you're itinerant, or if you’re contract O&M specialist, think about the times you didn't know what to do. We typically look around it others to see what they are doing. So that way we have some guidance. And now we do have our own inner guidance. My inner voice wants you to know that it's all within you already. But we literally can't know or experience everything, there's not enough time. So we can either keep swimming out in the ocean all by ourselves and come across every obstacle like it's a brand new novel situation or challenge and treat it as such, and spend our time problem solving all of those challenges. We can learn from other people and see what they have done. So that way we can save ourselves time and energy and we can figure out; okay, this has worked for them, and now I'm going to put my own spin on it. And I'm going to work it for myself in this way. That's exactly what I want you to do with these activities.

These are things that I've done with my students, we have a bunch of clarity members that use some of these activities as well. And they are super duper great. And also feel free to mix it up, change it up. Don't have to do the same thing every single year with every single learner just because that's the way we've always done it in the past. You can do these activities at anytime for White Cane Day or Blindness Awareness Month or really just any time because they all include or orientation and mobility in some way. And some of the ideas are virtual, some of them are in person, because right now it's only to anyone and that is where we are at. I don't see Virtual Learning going away full time anytime soon, even if it just goes back down to snow days or things of that nature.

White Cane Day Activity Ideas

Okay, drumroll please! Here are your White Cane Day activity ideas.

1. Blindness Awareness Month Jeopardy

My favourite one is a virtual, or you can do it in person, but you need a computer, it’s a Blindness Awareness Month jeopardy. Now, this is something that we have given away in clarity. And so if you're in our clarity, membership, it's already there for you. If you're not, this is a very simple to put together, anybody can do it, it does take some time, trust me, set aside some time for this maybe a few hours. But the gist here is that you're going to get some Jeopardy slides, all you have to do is look them up on the Google's grab one of those templates, fill it in with the questions and the answers that you want. And then the slides will link to the answers and all that jazz. It's really the linking of this stuff, and making sure that everything works, that takes the most time. For that I really like to have different history facts that might be well known or not well known. I like to have maybe some cane skills, and some inspiration, as well, like people who have visual impairments who might be famous. That way, you get the interest of not only your learner, but maybe their friends too, which is always fun.

2. Cane Skills Tournament

Now this has been so fun, I do it, not with cane skills with my student, but with another set of skills. In October and clarity, we're talking about cane skill. So that's why this is a cane skills tournament, but you can turn it into any set of skills right here, it's just easier and faster to do with cane skills. Basically, what you do is you take a set of skills, I would take like eight of them or four of them, and you put them on a bracket like you would any other bracket tournament. And two skills go head to head with one another. And so by that I have my learner, practice those skills or demonstrate those skills for maybe a certain amount of time or a certain amount of things that they have to find if you're using a monocular. And then from there, you do it for the next two, and then the next two, and then the next two. And that's round one. So right there, you get a lot of cane practice in. And then round two, you take the one that the student did the best out of each of those, head to head competitions and that becomes your round two. So on and so forth until you find the very best skill out of all of those skills. I would suggest sticking with the same type of skill for most of them. And or having like half of it be one type of skill, half of it be another type of skill. You can easily do like cane skills and soliciting assistance, but it's going to require different criteria so it makes it a little different. You may or may not be able to do those all in the same lesson. You want to be able to do it all in the same lesson, or do one round in one lesson and then the next two rounds or three rounds in the subsequent lessons, then you'll want to just make sure that you plan it out in time and out.

3. Guided Relay Race

I love doing this with the younger kids, elementary age is a little guided relay race where you teach the sighted friend how to be a guide. And then the other person uses their cane. Now you have to do it very slowly, right? It's not really going to be like a race. But you're then both practising and teaching how to be a guide for your learner.

4. Obstacle Course

Now some other ideas that you can do with some groups if you have some groups are an obstacle course now this one can also be done with just one student. And then giving out a trophy at the end is always really cute and fun. I like to go to the dollar store and see if I can get any like knickknacks, instead of just a piece of paper or a trophy and something that they can actually play with. If you have a treasure box, bring that along too.

5. Experiential Activity

Now, this one has been done multiple times, you have a section where you teach guide technique. And then a section where they're actually having blindfolds on and making things or touching orbies or guessing toys out of a box. Maybe they're making a sandwich or spreading hummus on crackers. Got to be careful with that peanut butter in schools, hummus works really well. There's also a chocolate hummus here in Texas, and that spreads really well on like bread. And it tastes really good too. Don't be scared of it. Now you can always do the cards, and the pin, and the pretzel and all of those fun crafts. Those are super adorable. I've never personally done them. But I love watching other people on social media and how they incorporate white cane day into their learners activities. And of course, if you're just doing one on one, and I don't mean just because it's still a lesson. Having your learner go and deliver things is always a great way to incorporate that mobility if you're staying on campus that day.

Summary

Now, before I summarise this for you, I want to let you know that if you are in our email list, meaning that if you get weekly emails from me on the week of white King Day 2021. So October 13th through 15th, you will have a chance to register for the International orientation and mobility online symposium at a super discounted pre sale price. It only goes out to you guys. There are some stipulations and rules around it, you can find out more in your email inbox, be on the lookout for that, because you do not want to miss this incredible opportunity. 

Okay, back to the show. Let's just wrap up for you guys, you got our White Cane Day activities that are so easy that you can implement them right now, blindness Awareness Month Jeopardy, you're definitely going to want to take your planning period to grab those questions and import them into a Jeopardy slides template. But it's still can easily be done today. And if you're in clarity, just pull it up, it's in your October lessons folder. Have some fun with it, grab your students friends, and make a fun game out of the whole thing. We've got a cane skills tournament. This is great for a one on one in person session. And this is where you take your cane skills, break them up, and have two set of skills go head to head with one another in one round, do four or eight of them, and then move on to round two. And round three, just like a normal tournament. Just see which cane skill your learner can do better. I suggest for rounds two and three that you make things a little bit harder, maybe a little longer time, a little longer distance, just up the ante a little bit and have some fun with it. Number three is a really race where you blindfold your students friends. Now of course, this isn't gonna be like a super, super fast race. But it's a lot of fun to have one guide, you got to teach them how to be a guide. And then one person using a cane and or just holding on to the guide and they are blindfolded are closing their eyes. The fourth idea is also a one on one in person idea. But you can do this virtually at home. With a little bit of communication from the family and nights and obstacle courses are always so fun, have a trophy at the end and maybe bring your treasure box. And the fifth idea is an experiential activity where you have your learner and maybe one friend, maybe your learner goes to that admin assistant or maybe your learner goes and does this with a principal it can be an inservice idea. Take this idea and run with it. It doesn't have to be just young students. It doesn't have to be older students. I've seen it done with all age ranges. Seriously all age ranges where you practice some guide technique and having the person under blindfolds and then you also have them do some sort of sensory activity, making a sandwich spreading homeless on crackers touching or be It doesn't need to be super gross or super scary. It can just be a happy fun sensory activity.

Now remember that people who don't have visual impairments might have a fear of what happens when you have a visual impairment. So we're not looking for any more saviours. We're not looking for any more imposition of learned helplessness. We don't want to like scare them or think that people with visual impairments, they'll have the worst life ever like oh my gosh, how could you deal with that that's not the case. And I've seen some grown adults sit themselves down because they got so scared and it traumatised them so much that they were overly friendly to us afterwards. You don't need to do that. You can just have a fun copy activity. Those are your five ideas, I hope that you enjoyed them. Again, if you're on our email list, we've got a pre sale happening in the week of October 13th through the 15th that you do not want to miss if you need to be on that email us. Just send me a DM on Instagram @alliedindependence or Facebook Kassy Allied Independence, or email us the team@alliedIndependenceonline.com so you can cash in on that pre sale.

Alright friends, we'll be back very soon. With some really great information about bringing O and M into the digital age from talk to you then I hope that you can take this information and just take one step forward this week.

You know that feeling when you've been rushing around all day. Your kids need food your students need to be scheduled. It's five minutes before your next lesson, and you have no plans. Teaching during a pandemic has had many challenges. Wouldn't you agree? One of which being it takes so much longer to plan for a remote O&M lesson, then he did to plan for a face to face lesson. But that's not a problem anymore because my friend we have got you covered. Your Allied Independence community stepped up. And we've bundled together eight remote O&M lesson plans that can be taught virtually or distance all created by your community and customizable to your individual students unique needs in five minutes or less. You want ‘em? I know you do. All you have to do is go to Allied Independence online.com forward slash remote R E M O T E and grab your copy. Eight free O&M lesson plans so you can start spending your time doing what you do best and that my friend is teaching.