An Unusual Website For Teachers
It is always fun to create a new Ability Guidebook for my home city of Portland, Oregon! The Lan Su Chinese Garden in downtown Portland is one of the absolute gems of the city!! This book will support autistic people visiting the garden! It makes a great field trip guide for younger grades as well.
FINAL Ability Guidebook Lan Su Chinese Garden
Three years ago I contacted the Rose Festival to suggest to them that they create some events that were more accessible to people with special needs. Because I work so much with people with autism I knew that there were quite a few people who were never able to visit Cityfair at Waterfront Park. With the combinations of crowds, noise, music and carnival rides it was more than some of my students could handle.
The Rose Festival has been awesome and for three years they have opened early one day during the weekend and allowed visitors free entry to the Walk on the Wild Side Animal Safari and the Kidzone. This finally allowed people with sensory issues a chance to visit the lions, skunks, lizards and snakes without any noise or crowds. I never dreamed the Rose Festival would be so amazing and every year is better. This year they are doubling the amount of time for the special needs day.
June 3 from 9-11 there is free entry to Cityfair for people with special needs and their families. Come see the animals and then walk around the carnival area. At eleven the rides will start running so maybe you can stay and try a ride or two!!
Below is a link to an Ablity Guidebook on how to attend the event. Print it out or pull it up on your phone. We look forward to seeing you at the animal safari!
I’m thrilled to be able to start posting the original sets of Ability Guidebooks focused on my home city of Portland. This was the beginning of the whole project and where they saw their first amazing successes helping people who had difficulties getting out into public.
I have partnered up with Portland State University to have students make more books for our community. I’ll be sure to let you know when the student written books are up online!
But for today, I’m proud to say, we are going UP on the Portland Aerial Tram!