3 Cortical Visual Impairment Christmas Activities (and Hanukkah too!)

I love celebrating the holidays with my students. I always get permission from families before introducing anything holiday-related. If you can teach about/celebrate the holidays, here are three cortical visual impairment Christmas activities that can be used in special education, preschool, and elementary classrooms.

1. Sensory Bins

The first cortical visual impairment Christmas activity is sensory bins. One of my favorite sensory bin fillers is pom poms. They are affordable, come in different sizes, and are easy to clean up! For students with cortical visual impairment, I usually use black pom poms. These pom poms can provide a nice contrast with the activity cards placed inside. Sensory bins are a fun way to enhance adapted books. For example, you can take the pieces from my CVI Series: Christmas Adapted Books or my CVI Series: Hanukkah Adapted Books and place them in the bin with the pom-poms. Then, as students read the book they will search for the corresponding piece in the bin. Corresponding manipulatives, such as a dreidel, candle, menorah, an ornament, etc, make a great addition to the sensory bin as well!

2. Decorating a Tree– one of my FAVORITE Cortical Visual Impairment Christmas Activities!

For schools that allow students to learn about Christmas, this is one of my favorite activities. I purchased this Felt Christmas Tree from Amazon. Click here is the non-affiliate link. Ornaments are included with the tree. However, depending on your students’ visual needs, you can also make more ornaments from glitter foam board. This Christmas tree can be used as a center activity or a whole group activity. To make this cortical visual impairment Christmas activity academic you can work on colors, shapes, size, one-step directions, and more when decorating the tree.

3. Manipulatives

Manipulatives are a great way to make an activity more interactive and concrete, especially for students with visual impairments and autism. I love this mini baking set I bought from Amazon. This set is perfect for dramatic play or with my CVI Series: Let’s Bake Cookies Adapted Books. While reading the book, students can interact with the manipulatives that correspond with the pages. For a sensory experience, use dough for students to roll, cut, put on the cookie tray, and more! The manipulatives can help students learn the vocabulary associated with them, assist them with sequencing the steps of baking, etc.

Be sure to check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store HERE for more CVI friendly resources.