For the class

A 30-minute activity

For children aged 5 to 10. You need: a box for 6 eggs (or a muffin tin) and 6 balls, the printed “My name” sheet, coloured pencils. The website on the whiteboard or a tablet.

1. 5′

   Who was Louis Braille

   Louis Braille was born in France on 4 January 1809. At 3 he injured an eye in his father’s workshop; an infection left him completely blind by the age of 5. At 15, at a school for blind boys in Paris, he invented a way of reading with the fingers: six raised dots.

2. 5′

   The cell with the egg box

   The box of 6 is a cell: 1-2-3 on the left, 4-5-6 on the right. Put the balls in dots 1 and 2: that’s b. Open “The dots” on the website and do “turn on the dot”.

3. 10′

   Your name in Braille

   Everyone writes their name in the game and colours it in (or makes it raised) on the printed sheet.

4. 5′

   Your name with your hands

   All together, fingerspell your names with the sign language fingerspelling alphabet, watching the hands on the website.

5. 5′

   Where do I find it?

   Braille is all around us: on lift buttons, on medicine boxes (in Europe the name of the medicine in Braille is required by law). Who has seen it before?

If there’s a blind or deaf classmate in the class

• Ask the child and the special needs teacher how they prefer to do it: the child is the expert.
• Don’t touch their cane, Braille writer, hearing aid or display without asking.
• With a blind classmate: say your name when you talk to them and describe out loud what you show on the board.
• With a deaf classmate: look at them when you speak, don’t cover your mouth, write down the important things; if they use sign language, the interpreter or communication assistant is there for them.
• The website works with a screen reader, with the keyboard and without audio: they can play too, with everyone else.