The children at Kings Glen Elementary School in Springfield stood in line yesterday afternoon to toss beanbags into nets. They picked Dum Dums from the lollipop tree and ate chicken nuggets and giggled as they jumped in the moon bounce.
At first glance, the Chatterbox Fun Fair seemed like dozens of other Saturday springtime festivals at elementary schools across Fairfax County.
But at Kings Glen, the face-painting table, the miniature golf and even the food stand were adapted for disabled children who have difficulty speaking or do not speak at all. A "talking" electronic box near the bowling game helped Naimul Iftikhar, 6, who has delayed development of motor skills, tell the volunteers that she wanted a turn. And a big, green button controlling a machine that spun round and round -- transforming gobs of paint on paper plates into swirling designs -- made it possible for Norma White, 7, who has cerebral palsy, to make her own creation.
Naimul's mother, Rabia Khan, said that in this setting, her typically shy daughter did not hesitate to join the other children. The girl went from table to table, filling her mother's hands with the green jelly bracelet, brightly colored pencils and other trinkets she had won.
"In the normal school environment, with the normal kids, she would stay in the background and she will not do it by herself," Khan said. "With the other kids, she tends to wait."
Fairfax schools have hosted the fair four times, and each time more families attend, said Kathy Rini, an assistive technology resource teacher and one of the organizers. About 370 students, from preschoolers to sixth-graders, signed up. Outside the gymnasium, which was bustling. children watched Fairfax police officers show off their skills on motorcycles, and they got to inspect a firetruck.
Ellie Stack, an educational specialist who helped coordinate the fair, said about 2,600 of the 23,000 special-education students in Fairfax schools use some sort of "adaptive" device to help them communicate or complete schoolwork. Those devices range from simple, battery-operated machines, with one or two buttons that allow a child to select recorded messages, to elaborate computers that let a child choose words represented by dozens of pictures.
In one corner of the gym, Norma White set a rubber ball atop a track and pushed it toward plastic bowling pins. Moira Lozzi, a preschool special-education teacher, smiled broadly when all the pins dropped. "A strike -- give me a high-five," Lozzi said.
Jane White, Norma's mother, said it helps Norma to have volunteers who are trained to work with disabled children. The smallest things, like knowing to bend down and talk face to face to a child, make a difference, she said.
At a long table in the cafeteria, Craig Pearson and Debbie Long had pizza with their sons, Matthew, 12, and David, 10. Matthew, who is autistic and uses an electronic communication device at home, ordered fruit juice by pressing a button marked "juice" instead of one that said "water."
That small action, Long said, gave her son a little more independence. "He realizes he can interact with somebody other than the people at school and his family, and realizes there are reasons for doing that," she said.
For the Pearsons, the fair also was a comfortable place for the family to have fun. When they venture out, even to the grocery store, they sometimes come across people who, not realizing Matthew has a disability, look at them strangely. At the fair, everyone understood.
"From a family standpoint, we don't stand out that much," Pearson said. "Here, they cheer for what he can do."
