"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." Deuteronomy 6:5-7



Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Louis Braille

We have a book called, I Heard Good News Today, and the stories are usually about Christian historical figures. Well, the book is amazing. I think my favorite story is the one about Boniface. And Emma always asks me in disbelief, "Is this really a true story?" and I always get to smile and say, "yes!"

So yesterday, we read about Louis Braille, and how after he went blind he prayed for God to help him find a way to read. His pastor ended up finding a school for blind children, and he learned to read by running his fingers across raised letters.

He then developed a more efficient system of reading for the blind, using raised dots. Of course this is what we know as Braille.

I really wanted to show Emma how a blind person reads with Braille so we found this video of a five year old child reading out loud. Both of my girls were so interested in the videos and it opened up their eyes to the challenges of others who are blind or visually impaired.

5 Year Old Jalen Reading Braille

This next video showed children reading in braille at Jenkins Elementary School as well as WRITING in braille with a type of typewriter called a "Perkins Brailler."

Learning Braille at Jenkins Elementary

It was so neat to be able to find these videos. I just love homeschooling.