Fall Festival for Individuals with Special Needs and their Families
By Mina Frannea
I love bringing attention to people who give back to their community. One such person is Heather, a mom whose eight-year-old daughter, LeAnna, has Downs Syndrome. I met Heather a few years ago and could see right away how dedicated she was to ensuring that LeAnna felt included and comfortable in activities that other girls enjoyed. Heather’s passion for this grew into creating Especiallyneeded.org, an organization whose mission it is to build a strong community where individuals with special needs are valued, respected and included.
Especiallyneeded.org provides special needs families with information regarding local services and resources. The organization also hosts seasonal events where families with special needs children can have an opportunity to have fun and relax, and simply focus on spending quality time with each other.
On October 29th from 5:30pm – 8:00pm, Especiallyneeded.org is hosting their 2nd annual Fall Festival at The Ballfields at Craig Ranch in McKinney (6151 Alma Rd., McKinney, TX 75070). This is a FREE event!
Activities that special needs families will enjoy:
- Train Rides
- Cinderella and her horse drawn carriage
- Petting zoo
- Carnival booths
- games and prizes
- trick or treating
- Pumpkin painting
- Bounce Houses
- Face painting & more
There will be lots of photo opportunities at the event so don’t forget your camera! Food and drinks will be available.
Especiallyneeded.org is looking for event sponsors and volunteers to help at the event. If you or someone you know can help sponsor or volunteer at this event, please contact Heather Astuto at heather@especiallyneeded.org. You can see current event needs listed on this page. If you want to make a tax deductible donation to especiallyneeded.org, visit this page. For more information about the Fall Festival, print this flyer.
If you happen to attend this event, I would love to hear about your experience so please come back and leave a comment below!
Mina Frannea is a Mom to eight-year-old twins and enjoys writing about life in general, family friendly activities around town, favorite recipes and crafts that keep her children busy and happy. For more posts by Mina, visit her blog at www.themomsjournal.com.
This is awesome. I wish we lived closer or there were things like this closer to Mansfield. We moved from Little Elm early this year. I never had an issue finding fun things to do for my special needs child when we lived north but now that we live south I never seem to find anything.
Kristy, thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I know it’s probably almost an hour away, but this festival put on by especiallyneeded.org promises to be a lot of fun. Last I heard there are about 700 people expected! As for finding a resource to help you find things locallyin your area, you might try contacting Heather at especiallyneeded.org. I bet she would be a great first step!
I also did a quick search on special needs resources in Mansfield, TX and found the following. Not sure if they can be of help to you, but thought I would list them juse in case:
http://www.firstmethodistmansfield.org/event/220110-2011-11-04-stepping-stone/
http://local.tacanow.org/Special_Needs_Schools_Mansfield_TX-p1554752-Mansfield_TX.html
http://www.txspecialkids.org/home.htm
Thanks again, and have a great weekend!
[...] resources and support from sponsors and volunteers, Heather has put together various events such as Especiallyneeded.org’s Fall Festival , where over 400 people and more than 150 families [...]