Brooke's Visit

Noah's Mom Brooke, is a community helper who teaches teachers how to teach people who are blind. Brooke visited our PreK classroom and talked about what the word disability means. We learned that a disability is "when your body is a little different and that people with disabilities do things a little differently than other people." We learned that blind people use their hands in many more ways than people who have their eye sight."

We talked about what it may feel like to be blind and Brooke had an activity for the children to participate in that may help them get a better sense of being blind. Brooke explained that bind people use their hands to gets lots of information and by touching and feeling things they are better able to learn about the world. We played a game where the children closed their eyes and reached into a bag that was filled with various objects and tried to guess what the object was.

Our Pre K children had prepared extensively for Brooke's visit and we had the opportunity to ask several of the questions that were generated the day before. ( blog: Learning Emerging Through Thoughtful Discussions).

"How can blind people read?" was a question asked and this led our discussion in the direction which explored braille : braille writers , braille stories, letters of the alphabet.

Brooke read Thingamagjig by Suzette Wright which is a braille reader where the story is in both English and braille. We learned that the pictures in braille readers are raised and can be identified by touching them and using your hands. A blind person using both hands to read a book; one hand is the guide and the other hand is the reader.

The braille writer is a machine that is used to write letters in braille. Both hands are used to push the keys and make "dots"which is actually the letters of the alphabet. We all had a chance to try the braille writer machine and Brooke wrote each of our names in braille for us to take home!

Our names felt like little dots and it was really cool to feel what our would feel like rather than

what our names would look like.

This visitation about being blind, lifted the children's awareness and it was fascinating to observe how the children were working very hard to identify and 'feel' what it really feels like to be blind. These sensitive experiences in the classroom help for children to develop compassion and empathy.

The children were very invested in all of the morning experiences and were eager to ask more questions and seemed to want to continue exploring the materials that Brooke brought into our classroom. " How do blind people get around if they do not have a guide dog?"," How does a guide dog know where to go ?"

We knew that Brooke was returning to visit again the next day and the children had absolutely become more comfortable and seemed so open and truly interested in their learning.