There are also a lot of regional, state, or national programs & camps were kids can get exposed to a whole host of new experiences & try new activities. To take advantage of many of the away-from-home opportunities, WE (Parents & Educators) need to do a much better job of assuring that our children achieve AGE-APPROPRIATE independent living skills & O&M skills earlier on.
In order for blind children to have full overnight sports (or other) camp experiences, such as CampAbilities, they need to be more independent & feel comfortable with their ADLs (Activities of Daily Living) in addition to truly age-appropriate O&M skills. They need to be able to independently brush their teeth, bathe/shower, dress themselves, manage their things & get around. If they still need to rely on others, kids are likely to find the experiences much less enjoyable, perhaps even stressful, & they will likely be lead around by well-meaning sighted assistants who will hang out with them & impede their normal social interactions.
Preparation for Away Experiences. Mastery of ADLs does not happen overnight, rather they need to be refined over months & perhaps years. To optimize the likelihood of positive experience, once we decided to send my older son away to the 3-4 week summer BUDDY program at the Louisiana Center for the Blind, we discussed it with him & he helped make a list of things he needed & wanted to learn before the program. He “bought into” the process. Thus, beyond the camp experience itself, he learned many important skills over the entire year leading up to that summer. The preparation time was a great opportunity. There was a need; we made the time to address things we had previously just “been to busy” to do, one step at a time.
If fact, when then in Middle School the whole 6th grade spent a week in the San Bernardino Mountains at “Science Camp” he felt totally prepared, whereas some of his sighted classmates had been apprehensive beforehand for they had never spent that much time away from home.