Sensory Tote Bags

Did you know that WBS has resources designed with the visually impaired in mind?  It is called a Sensory Bag and can be signed out from the Visitor’s Center.  This special educational tool is designed to be taken along with you as you tour our site. 

With so many things to see at WBS, we wanted to do something special for those who are not able take in the sights.  A former intern took on the challenge of creating a guidebook in Braille that can be taken along with you on your walk down the exhibit line past our Wildlife Hospital.  This book has educational information and facts about most of the birds that are on exhibit.

In this Sensory Bag are also several items that can be handled, though special care must be taken to ensure that none of the items get damaged in the process. 

Even our sighted guests love to feel the talons of the various birds

To learn more about birds of prey and other species, there is a container of three different bird skulls, seven talons from birds of prey, envelopes that contain American Kestrel and Screech Owl wings, feathers and a mammal bone.  There is an informational guide sheet about the natural items in the Sensory Bag and information about birds of prey. 

There is also a Backyard Birdsong Guide that features an Audio Field Guide so that you can listen for and identify the different songbirds you may hear on your walk.

Another great teaching aid with more “hands on” items is our Touch Table located at the Visitor’s Center.  This table has several natural items from several different species of animals, including deer, bear, turtles, emu, turkey, raccoon and more. 

We hope that these tools will enhance the visit of those with visual impairments and that it makes their visit more memorable and of course, educational.

Just return the Sensory Bag to the Visitor’s Center at the end of your visit.

Story and photos submitted by Billie Baumann, World Bird Sanctuary Outreach Coordinator

New Learning Materials

Now Available - Materials For Persons Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired

Environmental education about birds tends to be very visual-based learning, especially when learning about raptors, the meat-eaters of the bird world.  At least, it has been until now.  

These items can be borrowed from our Monsanto Fund Environmental Education Center.

The World Bird Sanctuary is proud to now offer tactile learning materials for persons who are blind or visually impaired.  At our Monsanto Fund Environmental Education Center (EEC), visitors may borrow a tote bag that has a variety of such materials, including a tactile map, binoculars, several examples of bird wings, talons, and skulls, and a packet of information printed in Braille about our exhibit birds.  We hope these materials will enhance our visitors' experience while they explore our sanctuary.

On that note, a number of other improvements have been made at the sanctuary to make our visitors' visits even safer and more informative.  This includes improvements to our pathways and painting step edges and obstacles to make them easier for the visually impaired to see.  

The touch table gives visitors a chance to see some natural items close up. These items now have Braille labels

We have also organized a set of touch table items available in the EEC and labeled them in Braille, and created a series of guess-what's-inside style touch boxes that are now located outside of the wildlife hospital.  

Here is an example of some of the changes to our exhibit line to make the information more accessible to everyone

We have begun to label our exhibit signs in Braille in preparation for an audio tour that is in the works, and soon our amphitheater steps will be rebuilt to be safer and nicer overall.  These are the first of a series of changes that will hopefully make our sanctuary more accessible to everyone.

Dumpling, our friendly Bantam Cochin Chicken, also helps our blind and visually impaired visitors to learn about birds

We would like to thank Ashley Quinn with the Delta Gamma Center for Children with Visual Impairments and Danny Huff of the Missouri Council of the Blind for their ideas.

We would especially like to thank Mildred Eaves and Kendra Hjorth of the St. Louis Society for the Blind and Visually Impaired, who toured the sanctuary with us to give us tailored suggestions of improvements, and provided us with the Braille printing assistance to create the accessible information materials that are now available.

Submitted by Robin Kuehn, World Bird Sanctuary Intern