On PE, organized sports are adapting. Beepball, goal ball, baseball all have national leagues for adults. Climbing, running and swimming are all possibilities for an elementary age child. They may not be available through the school but he could arrange credit from an outside facility.

Art: 3D media. Textures, shapes, various surfaces. Clay or salt dough is a good place to start. Pipe cleaners, glue gun or tracing wheel can create boundaries that hands can discover and fill in with a substance of choice. Even crayon can leave a texture a blind child can discern. Early art education is focused on eye hand coordination and visual interaction. Both of these can translate to tactile media.

PE for me was "Oh, you can't see to play these sportsball games we always play? Do laps." So I did laps for 10 years and hated PE. I faked a lot of other injuries so I could just sit out and do homework for other classes. Sometimes I'd be allowed to go and use the weight room in high school, which was pretty OK, but that only happened if there was another teacher or coach in there that period. No one was allowed in the weight room unsupervised for safety reasons.

I desperately wanted to play softball when I was younger. I would have loved something like beepball. I did participate some in basketball, if we were just shooting or doing drills and not playing competitive games.

Art, I never had much trouble with, because my remaining vision allowed me to still do most things if I could get close enough to what I was working on (I actually have an art degree). But for the little dude you're working with, I'd say sculpture in various different medias, textile arts, etc. I've seen a couple of really neat exhibits that mixed sculpture with audio.

Can confirm PE was a nightmare. I grew up in a rural town so our Cross Country course was actually cross country and they expected me to run confidently over uneven terrain. I would always come last, having walked the thing with my only friend in a minor act of rebellion.

Things got better when I was allowed to take my dog for a walk for the duration of the class. It helped that I lived close to school.

My art teacher was the worst. He talked all this bullshit about me 'viewing the world differently' and insisted that I paint abstract art while everyone else painted still life. Wouldn't let me use the wood cutting tools for prints and excluded me very intentionally from drawing a mural for the school. Fuck that dude.

I got into digital art instead. I got pretty decent at it too.

I don't think alternative activities are bad, just that they don't make us stand out more than we have to.

With PE, it depends on how at risk your student is for further eye damage or other health risks. I liked PE well enough early on when I could bounce the basketball and run around. As I got older, it became pretty hellish with the introduction of things like dodgeball and volleyball, neither of which I could play. I spent a lot of time cutting up ribbons that I would never win myself for school spirit day while everyone else exercised in the gym. Or tossing handkerchiefs/bouncing balloons in a corner while everyone else played volleyball. The few times I played dodgeball were a nightmare since I had to wear a helmet and huge goggles in class; talk about painting a target on a kid's head. I...don't have a high opinion of PE thanks to all of that.

Art class depends on what kind of vision your student has and what the teachers are doing. For first grade it shouldn't be too tough if this kiddo has any vision at all. We did a lot of things with felt, popsicle sticks, cotton balls, and glue as far as I remember. And finger paints, which is great at any age. Although I'm almost totally blind, I did eventually become a professional freelance artist, so I got pretty into art. There's a lot your student can do in this class as long as the teacher is willing to work with them and doesn't insist on there only being one way to do something. I suppose the same is true of PE.

I would start with your student, see what their capabilities and interests are and what you can introduce them to in both classes that is safe and enjoyable.

For Phys. Ed. what I would do is encourage hand over hand, showing your student through them "watching" you do simple exercises. For the games the students play ask the student if they understood the instructions the teacher/coach gave everyone, or if the student wants or needs pull them aside and practice individual skills required in the game (passing, dribbling, kicking, etc)

Art: As I was going through the elder grades I skipped art to learn further on Braille, and I sort of regret this. I bet you know this already but how much does your first grader see in terms of colour distinction? Teaching skills like cutting with scissors is relevant to a lot of first grade art and it's a transferrable skill. I liked working with the white glue because after I spread it with a brush I could spread it with my fingers and then rub the glue off my fingers.

For me, PE was fun during all my years of school. It's part of the reason why I love sports to this day. Activities can be taught however, they need to be taught physically. They simply can't be described. Someone needs to be there to teach this person physically so that he knows what the other kids are doing. As for getting older and playing sports like Basketball, it all comes down to muscle memory. I have not played Basketball for years but yet I still remember how to shoot the ball and Dribble with 2 hands. Art was fun because I mainly did tactile art. As for painting, the key is to stay within the boundaries of the paper which is not hard once taught. Drawing sucks in my opinion but sculpting is totally awesome and you can just be creative. You can teach him how to use tools and how to make certain creations out of clay such as pots and statues unless he just wants to play around which my art teacher let me do. He'll be just fine. Don't over protect him. Show him that he can do things like sports and art and I promise you, he'll thank you when he's older.

I'm VI and participated in most things in PE and art classes without any explicit adaptations.

When I got to highschool though, my PE teacher just wouldn't get what I could and couldn't do: I'm blind in one eye and always had a terrible time with balls, so she decided I should be a referee instead of playing. I told her I "don't have quite the eye to be a ref" as a very polite way of indicating it was impossible for me to call out fouls from across the field and she dismissed that entirely. It was one of the funniest conversations in my life.

After that, I switched from physically participating to writing papers on sports: don't let this happen. People need physical activity and interaction in sports.

Eventually, another much better PE teacher took me under his wing, so to speak, and worked with me one-on-one in running, weightlifting and aerobics, along with some textbook oriented stuff. That was much better.

The bottom line from my experience is that it's important for teachers to understand what their students can and can't do and not to limit them unnecessarily or make impossible demands. There looks like there's lots of good advice on this thread too.