[blindkid] What are your thoughts on coloring?

Sat Oct 1 05:08:04 UTC 2011

Heather, 

I hope you don't mind if I weigh in on something you were directing towards Carol. 

Your point is well taken, but I think there is at least a little (underscore "little") merit in letting blind children, particularly interested younger blind children, color a bit, if simply to do what the other kids are doing. I also think that's pretty much the only reason to have a completely blind student coloring with crayons in class. (I'm not too convinced as far as the finger strength claims.) Let's not deny blind kids the experience of feeling the sticky feel of crayon wax or knowing that "crayon smell" up close, for example. Some kids even learn the taste, but I'm not encouraging that "common experience"! I do still remember that sticky sound they make when they are lifted from the page, and that takes me straight back to my grade school, if not pre-school days. It isn't so much doing the same exact activity, it is sharing the same common experience, at least as much as possible.

My concern here is, to borrow the example of the profoundly deaf child, that this could be like telling a profoundly deaf child she MUST NOT go and sit with friends for a violin demonstration in a music appreciation class. There are socially appropriate reasons to offer these opportunities, and in that case, some visual learning that would sneak in to at least slightly offset the lost auditory learning opportunity.

With that said, why not use raised glue lines or perhaps screen wire to make this more interesting and yet be a sharing opportunity for the same general (crayon) experience, or better still (it seems to me) after the child has experienced the crayon drawing a bit, why not offer a related, but more tactile activity that is similar to what the other kids are doing in the same place at the same time? This is the point where the poor planning really comes in from a teaching standpoint-- now being the time to start crafting the same cow the other kids are crayon-coloring out of play-doh, for example.

Ideally (though it rarely seems to happen) some teachers even think to replace at least some highly visual activities for the WHOLE CLASS (like coloring with crayons) with other things at times which are more tactile. (Pipe cleaners, cotton balls, gluing pasta or sequins or beads, play-doh, clay, etc.) Some also give ALL the kids a couple of choices and make certain that at least one is non-visually focused. We have in fact sometimes found that the sighted kids think it is "not fair" that they cannot do the "cool things" Kendra gets to do. (A whole different discussion, but remember these are just kids...) So when feasible, why can't they? Let the sighted kids use clay instead of coloring. In fact, let the sighted kids use braillers too. Several of Kendra's sighted friends have learned a bit of basic braille during school, for example.

Let me offer another real-world story: Not log ago on a group family camping weekend, all the kids were decorating capes (there was a "superhero" theme). Kids each got a plain white plastic cape and there were markers to draw on them. Kendra has no light perception, but she knew what the other kids were doing so she asked for markers and even specified her marker colors. She then scribbled a fairly random but even distribution of various colors all over the cape. She was quite pleased with her cape and wore it proudly for the rest of the weekend. I would not dream of taking that opportunity from her. I realize you are not suggesting I should. I just want to be cautious before we start offering a "thou shalt not" approach for these sorts of things. Other things can get lost in the process of preventing "wasted time" on seemingly inappropriate activities.

Kendra has a favorite color, though she doesn't even know what a color really is. Her friends have favorites, so she does too. She wants to know people's eye color, hair color, clothing color-- you name it. She enjoys (conventional) letter shapes and knowing what at least some letters feel like. She doesn't  need to know print for most things she does, but she runs into A-frames, I-beams, D-rings, L-brackets, U-turns J-bolts V-belts, Y-splits. C-clamps, P-traps and S-curves just like we all do. We used to tell her not to "W-sit" when she was young and to this day, I doubt she has made the connection with a print letter. She hears that "X" marks the spot in drawings and maps, and she wants to know what the "K" in Kendra "looks" like to her sighted friends when it is on her shirt, for example. Only recently did she learn why an "O" and a zero ("0") are so easily confused for print readers. After all, for braille readers, a zero gets confused with a "J" but has nothing to do with an "O". Same thing with a lower-case print "L" and a one ("1"). If we shield her entirely from print learning because it may seem inappropriate, none of those things will make sense to her. It is, in a way, a similar problem as faced by non-braille reading teachers have when they fail to grasp D/F and H/J or other braille reversals or to get that a simple finger slip can quickly turn a "q" into a "p" or "r".

As to finger strength, you know what I think is a great tool to help build finger strength for brailling? A brailler. (Why not try one instead of crayons?) If the student is not a braille user yet, have the child "scribble" on a brailler. Likewise with a slate and stylus. Many of our kids have done it. Surely Kendra did. Working with Play-Doh or Clay also builds strength, and there are various little devices for that as well as specialized putty (whatever they call it) for various sorts of therapy. ("Theraputty", is it?) It comes in different formulas. Some are softer, others more firm. Crayon-drawing as a routine approach for building blind kids finger strength is surely not the most practical or advisable approach, and using it all the time for a blind child surely is inappropriate. 

With all of this said, do I think that TVI's needs to spend time working with crayons or even clay? Well, not unless these TVI's have way too much time assigned per student. Far more than simply needed to complete much more appropriate braille-related lessons. Maybe the classroom teachers or a para-pros might work on this but it doesn't sound like the ideal path to learning braille as far as I am concerned.

Surely you are right that there is too much incompetence and ill preparedness that many of our kids deal with. I just don't want us to react so strongly to it that we deprive our kids certain basic experiences when we respond to the incompetence. That's how it all strikes me-- your mileage may vary.

Richard

On Sep 30, 2011, at 7:02 PM, Heather Field wrote:

> Hi Carol,
> As, in the circumstances described in these posts by mothers whose children have no usable vision, I can think of absolutely no useful purpose to be served by colorin. Even coloring within raised lines has very small value, except for older children who have attained hand strength, co-ordination and abstract reasoning ability, and are working on some kind of diagraming/graphinc or tactile art project.
> 
> I liken this to insisting that profoundly deaf 5-year-olds attend violin music appreciation classes. While your point on how much wasted time is too much, is well taken, I don't believe this is the issue in this case. The blind children are being compelled to take part in an activity under false pretenses. It does not develop hand strength, co-ordination or fine motor skills for what the blind child needs. When pursued in individual circumstances with TVIs and blind children with no usable vision, I have found in 100% of cases that the activity is chosen out of teacher incompetence or ill preparedness.
> I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how coloring benefits blind children.
> Regards,
> Heather Field
> 
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Carol Castellano
> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 1:56 PM
> To: NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)
> Subject: Re: [blindkid] What are your thoughts on coloring?
> 
> I have a feeling there could be some middle ground on this issue.
> 
> Some coloring may be a useful experience for some blind children.  I
> don't think coloring itself is the real issue--the real issue is the
> idea of wasting a child's time when he/she could be doing more useful
> things.  I think the fact is that in any classroom on any given day,
> part of the time of some child--not just a blind child--might be
> being wasted.  Is it okay to waste some of a child's time?  How much
> would be acceptable? Parents of many kinds of children--not just
> blind children--grapple with this issue.  Teachers do, too.  If
> parents/the team determines that the coloring is taking up too large
> an amount of time and is really wasting all of that time, then it
> should be stopped.  But if it's determined that the coloring serves
> some purpose and isn't taking up an inordinate amount of time, then
> it could be continued.  The answer would vary, depending on the child
> and the circumstances.
> 
> If we take the idea of not wasting a child's time to its logical
> extreme, we find some difficulties.  In a classroom setting, we can't
> realistically eliminate any and all activities that might be wasting
> the time of any individual child.  Since classrooms contain a mix of
> children with a mix of abilities and interests, there will be times
> when the subject or activity is not completely appropriate for a
> particular child's abilities and needs.  My own feeling is that this
> can help a child to learn self discipline and self control :-),
> attributes that can help them in their later academic work and
> career.  It's a matter of degree.
> 
> Carol
> 
> At 11:28 AM 9/30/2011, you wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I am a TVI and blind myself. It is my experience that most TVI's aren't really very well trained in the area of early childhood. Thus, they find it difficult to come up with activities that really do develop fine motor skills for blind children. Further, many of them don't actually know the alternative, nonvisual methods that blind children will actually use to perform fine motor tasks, such as buttoning, snapping, zipping, tying, identifying coins, pouring, measuring etc. so they don't know the precursors to those skills. Also, as many of them are itinerant and must travel between schools, it is quite a challenge to organise and carry all kinds of hands-on activities/equipment for young blind children, replacing it often. So, it's not easy to do it well under the usual circumstances of the included/mainstreamed, young blind child needing fine motor skill development. It is much easier at the end of a tiring day when the children are doing art to simply justify the blind child's coloring with nonsense about fine motor skills and inclusion.
>> 
>> In my opinion, this nonsense about coloring is simply a result of teachers not knowing appropriate alternative activities. Holding a pencil is a very specific fine motor skill that benefits writing for sighted writers. I have seen no evidence that it develops the kind of finger eexterity and sensitivity, or strength for that matter, that TVIs claim it does for blind children. It makes my blood absolutely boil when I hear of children's time being wasted on such rubbish. This is a skill that they will never use for anything. Yes, I've heard the old "strengthening for the slate for the slate and stylus and the braille writer", but I'm a blind adult and I never had my time wasted with coloring and I use my stylus and slate just fine. Also, the braille writer has three keys for each hand to push. If this rediculous coloring is supposed to be so important for developing hand strength, shouldn't the children be using a crayon or pencil in both hands? How does it mystically develop strength in the hand not used to hold the marker? This is clearly nonsense. Furthermore, Creative expression is supposed to be part of art and, unless children are specifically Coloring as part of an activity such as a math worksheet - "color the six dogs blue" - all the sighted children are expressing themselves creatively. I cannot agree with denying blind children this creative expression. When do they get to decide how their art will look?
>> 
>> As for using coloring to justify inclusion this is perhaps the silliest reason of all. The blind child clearly cannot color and all his classmates see his incompetence. worse, they see that, unlike all of them who improve during the year, even with the help of an aide or teacher the blind child continues to be a pitifully bad colorer. How can this be seen as a positive factor in the inclusion of a blind child. Does anyone imagine for a moment that the blind child doesn't know that he can't color and that his coloring is worse than the other children? Why is it that TVIs will force children to color, telling them that they must learn to do what they don't like, but will not push them in areas of independence, such as being organised or travelling quickly down the hallway, even if they don't like doing so? these inconsistencies expose this coloring issue for the travesty is really is.
>> 
>> there are so many things that young blind children should be learning. Threading, cutting, modelling, ripping, screwing - bolts & nuts, jar lids/containers - paper folding and twisting, a million and one manipulative/construction toys designed to strengthen small muscles. This coloring is just an excuse for lack of teacher versatility and imaginativeness.
>> 
>> I have actually attended IEP meetings where we have challenged the TVI's claims for coloring for blind children. When closely questioned about their claims for its value, especially in reference to preparation for brailling when only one hand is actually being used, and with reference to future use of this skill beyond signing one's name in 10 years or so, they concede that it isn't really that useful. We then get it specifically written into the IEP that this child will "NOT be made to color with any medium for any reason. The child may use a crayon to mark with a check mark when correcting their work". Guess what, we have had to fight over it during the year, showing them the IEP to get them to stop making the blind child use scented markers in coloring; to stop them pretending to themselves that they are somehow providing a meaningful art experience to a child who has no idea what they're doing besides moving their hand randomly on the paper until the aide says "yes, that's good." The fact that the TVI agrees in an IEP meeting that it's meaningless as an art experience and inferior as a fine motor development activity, and agrees to have it prohibited in the IEP itself, and then proceeds to try to make a blind child color in class when they think they can do so without anyone knowing, speaks to me of the true nature of this activity.
>> 
>> Can anyone tell that I am passionate about the topic of blind children's time being wasted by teachers making them color? If I were a parent of a blind child being made to color, I would immediately call an IEP meeting and have it written into the IEP that my child would not be made to color in any medium under any circumstances. Naturally they will argue but if you add up the time in any given week that your child is wasting his young life coloring, you will be convinced it's worth the trouble.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Heather Field
>> -----Original Message----- From: Meng, Debi
>> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 2:40 PM
>> To: Katie Cochrane ; NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)
>> Subject: Re: [blindkid] What are your thoughts on coloring?
>> 
>> I did see the benefit at 3 and 4 but he should be beyond that.   Thanks for the advice.  I guess I need to find out what the goals are and if we can achieve them in another way.
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blindkid-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindkid-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Katie Cochrane
>> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 2:05 PM
>> To: NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)
>> Subject: Re: [blindkid] What are your thoughts on coloring?
>> 
>> My son is 3, and they spend a lot of time on coloring, too.  He is totally blind.  Our TVI explained to me it is important to build finger strength and dexterity for learning Braille, using a stylus to make Braille notes later, etc.  They also want him to get used to participating in tasks just like the rest of the kids in the class.  They do a lot of coloring of raised line papers, and they put textures under it.  We also have one of those musical coloring tablets (I think it's from Crayola) where it plays music as you scribble...the faster you scribble the faster the music plays. No matter what we do, it is not his favorite task, either, but I think the reasons they gave were reasonable.  Have you asked your TVI what the reasons are for focusing on coloring at this point in his education?  I know my son is younger, but I would imagine all of these reasons will still be relevant when he is in kindergarten.
>> 
>> Take care.
>> Katie
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
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