Making Braille with Legos - the Secret Ninja Decoder Language!

It has been a busy week learning many new things!  Last week Cole had his first two official Braille sessions with Ms. Valerie.  I joined the second one and was very impressed with how much he remembered.   There are so many parts of this journey that I just have never thought about.  For example, reading and writing Braille are two completely different tasks to learn and are very different.

Cole started using a Perkins Braille Writer this week.  Much like a type writer, he needs to learn all the different parts and keys so he can operate the device.  Luckily it has NO battery so it's very easy to work anywhere.  Although it is definitely prohibitively heavy so not a "road trip" type of activity - they are 10 pounds!  That's like 10 bags of sugar!  But he's learning and that's what matters.  There is one tricky part (I think) and that's converting what he's learning to READ into WRITING.  You can see in this picture he has something called a "swing cell" which mimics the "full cell" that you use to make Braille letters.  So he can take the pegs, create the letter, then "swing" it so it sits in front of the Braille in front of the correct keys.  In this example he is writing the word "all" and the swing cell has the letter "L".  Since it is three dots down the left side you can see he will press keys 1, 2 and 3 simultaneously.  As if this can't get MORE confusing, there are letters that also represent entire WORDS.  As you can see in this Braille print, the letter "L" also represents the word "like".  So in addition to learning the alphabet, translating it to type it, he will also have to learn the context being used to determine if something is a letter or a word.  You can also see on this printed sheet that the letter "C" also represents the word "can".  Cole's initial lessons are to learn the parts of the Braille writer and understand how to use the swing cell to type words.  This includes learning how to lock and unlock the Braille writer to insert and remove the paper and using the carriage return to move to the next line.

Ok, so now let's talk about reading Braille.  As I mentioned, we've been using the cupcake pan with the lacrosse balls and it has been working GREAT.  The only limitation is that 1) the kids tend to start throwing the balls in the kitchen and 2) he can only do one letter at a time.  So we created a little harder task so that he can start spelling words to make it more fun.  While Reagan was at her Black Belt practice Saturday afternoon we took a drive to Tysons's Corner Mall to the Lego store.  We picked up a tub of 2x3 tiles and studs.  If anyone is going to try this, I will warn you that the store ONLY carried this one orange brick in 2x3 and it's the thinner one.  All the other bricks were 2x2 or 2x8 (which wouldn't work for obvious reasons).  Of course with low vision, the contrast is critical so we chose the black studs and stacked the thin 2x3 bricks three high so they would be easier to work with.

I created the alphabet several times so we have a big tub of letters to create words and eventually write sentences.  I haven't learned punctuation yet, but I'm sure that will come next.  Although tempted to write the letter of each brick on the front, I was worried he would try to look at it.  But I did put a black dot on the front of each so it is easier to know the top from the bottom.  I have decided that each day I will write Cole a note while he's at school that he gets to decipher when he gets home.  The first line says "I love you," the second line says "Cole" and the third line says "Bischoff."  I'm still trying to figure out if putting the bricks next to each other makes it easier or harder to decipher the letters so I'm trying both right now.  The last two lines are the entire alphabet and then I added a few letters that are inverse to each other so he can learn them comparatively.  That's the E/I, R/W and F/D/J/H.  The mnemonics for that is Friendly Dogs Jump High but I'm not sure if he's going to get that yet.  Worth a shot!  The mnemonic for R/W is Right and Wrong.

He is still having a lot of fun with the Ninja Decoder idea and I have more props to share in my next post. I am trying to find a balance of fun and learning so this doesn't get old or become a chore. Finding a time to present it when he's not tired is challenging, but we're working at it. Right now he's having fun with the Ninja idea, but I worry over time he's going to see it like something he has to do.  Unfortunately everyone has homework, and this is just a little more than most kids.

He did voice last week that he was frustrated this was something only he has to learn.  His TVI mentioned there are lots of other kids learning it.  He knows one girl at his school and she happened to walk by. He was SO excited to find out she was a secret ninja too!  His TVI is also going to coordinate to have a middle schooler who is learning Braille come visit with him.  Apparently she wants to become a teacher and thought it would be fun to see how Ms. Valerie is teaching him.

And the latest quote from Cole, "Hey mom, don't you think it would have been better if we were all born in Heaven so we could see what it was like before we come to Earth?  Then we would know we really want to go there."

And with that, let's celebrate that Spring is here, the snow is melted and Easter is right around the corner!