Interactive Story Time for Children with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI)

Kids with Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) must be offered plenty of opportunity to develop literacy skills to the best of their ability. But in order to develop literacy skills, they must first learn concepts, language and ideas, a process called Emergent Literacy. All this can be done in a way that is accessible to a child with a visual impairment. 

Recently, our amazing CVI-endorsed vision consultant, Tara Tompai, introduced my daughter’s first CVI-adapted book, story and materials. It’s a story that she can relate to and experience. The book and materials meet my daughter’s vision-accessibility needs. More importantly, she can experience the story using a variety of senses: sight, smell and touch.

Meet Henry the Rubber Duck

Henry the Rubber Duck is the star of our story. This story is one about a yellow rubber duck that takes a bath. 

My daughter is currently functioning in Phase 1 on The CVI Range, an educational tool developed by Dr. Christine Roman-Lantzy. To meet her vision accessibility needs, we must use 3D objects that are red and shiny, or color-saturated. We must present them against a single-colored background.

For this reason, the book is solid black and made of felt. We can pull the objects off, interact with them, and place them back on using velcro. Unlike a typical book, the words are written on a separate sheet of paper to reduce complexity.

The book is highly personalized. We use a replica of my daughter’s toothbrush and toothpaste, bath towel, body lotion and scented body wash. By using objects she’s already familiar with, the story can be more meaningful to her and make more sense. This also addresses her difficulty with visual novelty which is one of The 10 Characteristics of CVI.

Through repetition of the story and the real-life experience, she can learn the language, ideas and concepts surrounding bath time. Every evening, her obnoxiously large and cute rubber duck “Mama Rubber Duck” joins us for bath time, too.

This story is about Henry the Rubber Duck, provided to us by our vision consultant

Hi V.

My name is Henry the rubber duck. I love bath time and getting ready for bed. I hear you like bath time too.

Let’s do bath time together. First let’s get wet! Are you ready? This is my bath. It’s smaller than your bath because I am smaller than you. Let’s feel the water. The water is wet. Is it cold? Is it warm? What do you think? Can you put me inside my bathtub?

I am floating. Do you see me swimming around? Touch me. Now try pushing me so I go under the water. I like that. I pop right up!

It’s time to get clean. First let’s wet my face cloth. Feel it when it is dry before you put it in the water. Now let’s dunk it under the water. Feel it. It’s wet. Let’s put some soap on my face cloth. Feel the face cloth now. Smell my soap and feel it. Do you like the smell? Should we wash my feathers? This is my shampoo. It smells and looks different than my soap for my body. Feel the bottle. Let’s open it together.

Now it’s time to get ready for bed time. Can we do that together? First, I need to get dry. Let’s use a towel to dry me off. Feel me, I am all dry now.

Next, I need to brush my teeth. This is my toothbrush. I have some red pipe cleaner around it because it helps me see it better. This is my toothpaste. It also has red ribbon around it so I can see it better. It has a lid on it, I need to take that off to get the toothpaste out. Smell my toothpaste. It’s minty. The toothpaste goes on top of the bristles of the brush. Feel the bristles first before you put the toothpaste on top. Kind of prickly, isn’t it? Now feel the toothpaste on top of the bristles. Kind of wet, isn’t it? Brushing your teeth is so important.

Now it is time for me to go to sleep. What kinds of things do you do before you go to sleep? Can I join in?