Special Needs and Inclusive Library Services (SNAILS)

The Glenview Public Library hosted a wonderful Friendship Club event for special needs kids and typical kids seeking friendship (grades 3-8) and their peer volunteer buddies (Friendship Ambassadors grades 4-12). We invited musician and sound healer Preston Klik to conduct a session called Sound, Frequency and Sensory Fun . He brought his large gong, a variety of singing bowls and bells, crystal bowls, drums, rattles, and other instruments from around the world. After explaining and passing around his instruments, he conducted a sound meditation. The kids reclined on the floor and lights went off. A DVD with kaleidoscopic images played on the large screen while Preston took us on a meditative journey via sound and vibration. Everyone enjoyed this unique and relaxing experience, even a child with autism laid back and settled down for a time. Trying the instruments was neat, and we had sensory boards available for fidgety hands. This post was written by SNAILS member Silvia Kraft-Wa...

Last December, Renee and I had the pleasure of presenting the final webinar in a five-part series celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act for Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS). We opened with some statistics about the prevalence of disabilities and then briefly talked about models of service and inclusive technologies that create a welcoming library environment for young patrons. Our favorite part of the presentation was the time spent showcasing the amazing targeted and inclusive programs our SNAILS member libraries are offering children, teens, and young adults. We're so proud of you! We invite you to view the presentation and share it widely. An archive of the webinar, including handouts, is posted on the  RAILS website .

Today's guest blog post was written by Paula Shapiro.  Paula is currently a Youth Services Librarian at the Deerfield Public Library in Deerfield, Illinois.  Thank you, Paula, for making this fantastic contribution to the SNAILS community! I always have loved working with tweens. I think they are interesting, funny, insightful and often trying to find a way to fit in.   With that said, as most of us can attest, it can be tough to be a tween! There is not a lot of programming out there for tweens with special needs and I believe that this type of programming is important and beneficial to kids of all abilities. With the help of our wonderful teen librarian, Nina Michael, we started to plan our first program: Board Game and Pizza Night For Tweens of All Abilities.     The vision was to have it be a buddy-type program where we paired up neuro-typical tweens with tweens with special needs.  Here is the   visual schedule (from Boardmaker ) that I ...