[Nfbf-l] FW: Chirpy eggs put hunt in kids' reach from the St. Pete Times 4/12/09

[Sherri]

That's a really good article.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sherrill O'Brien" <sherrill.obrien at verizon.net>
To: "NFBFL" <nfbf-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009 1:12 PM
Subject: [Nfbf-l] FW: Chirpy eggs put hunt in kids' reach from the St. Pete 
Times 4/12/09


Happy Easter to all!
Here's an article from the St. Pete Times which Mike saw in the paper and
emailed to me.  Debby Brackett had sent an article about these chirping
eggs, available, I believe, at Walmart.  Fantastic for blind kids, for sure,
but I think sighted ones might find them fun as well.  Otherwise, they
wouldn't be sold through a national chain.  This article is okay, but like
so many it's a bit too sappy.  JMO
Sherrill

Chirpy eggs put hunt in kids' reach
 Visually impaired, the children find the plastic prizes by sound and touch.
 BY ERIN SULLIVAN
 Times Staff Writer
  BROOKSVILLE - The Easter egg hunt began as they always do, with the
children in a bunch, fidgeting, baskets in hand, ready for the adult in
charge to just stop talking and finally say: Go.
  And they were off.
  "Listen, do you hear it?" a teacher asked, holding the hand of her
student, Dawson Auger, who is 6. He held onto his grand­mother with his
other hand.
  The egg was bright pink and chirped softly. Dawson, thin with shaggy brown
hair, swayed his head back and forth. He kneeled on the ground and let go of
his teacher and his grandmother, which is why this hunt was orga­nized, so
these kids - all visually impaired, some blind like Daw­son, some who can
only see out of the corner of one good eye, some whose world is light and
shadows and know that, one day, they will lose even that and everything will
be dark - aren't afraid to be kids. To run. To fall down. To not define
themselves by their sight.
  "They aren't blind kids," said Sylvia Perez, 39, the execu­tive director
of Lighthouse, an agency for the visually impaired and blind in Pasco,
Hernando and Citrus.
  "They are kids who happen to be visually impaired."
  The egg hunt was her idea, and it was held on the Light­house grounds in
Brooksville Saturday afternoon. She's been nearly blind since birth. It's
like she sees through two straws and what she can see is still blurry. Her
parents had four children after she was born, and she figures they were too
busy to treat her any differently, so she just did whatever her siblings
did. She even went on Easter egg hunts with them.
  "But I never found any eggs," she said.
  As a teen and young adult, she felt isolated. Her lack of sight was her
identity. But then she found visually impaired friends and gadgets to help
her gain con­fidence. She learned how to use a cane. She learned Braille.
  She married her college sweet­heart and had a daughter, Olivia, who is 9.
She threw herself into a career of making sure other kids don't feel alone,
like she did, and that they challenge themselves. "You can sit back and do
nothing," she said, "or you can persevere."
  She gently guides children sit­ting on the sidelines, safe with their
parents, to the melee, the action. The hunt.
  "Listen," the teacher said. Daw­son could hear it, the egg's soft
chirping, and he stretched his hands out in the darkness, fin­gers over
mulch and leaves. This was his first Easter egg hunt, and on the drive over
from Homo­sassa he kept talking about how it was his day; his special day.
  "My eyes are broken," he said.
  But you have so many things that do work, his teacher said. Your brain.
Your heart.
  "What does work?" she coun­tered.
  "My ears," he said.
  "What else?"
  "My hands."
  He scooted himself closer to the sound, knees in the dirt and then he felt
it, smooth, plastic, and grabbed with both hands, smil­ing, and held it
close, his egg, one of many he found that day.
 Erin Sullivan can be reached at esul­livan at sptimes.com.



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WILLVRAGOVIC | Times
 Teacher Karen Hettle, left, and Diane Badger help her grandson, Dawson
Auger, 6, search for eggs at the Easter egg hunt for visually impaired
children and their siblings Saturday in Brooksville.




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