My 6-year-old son Liam, who is deafblind, brought this little reader home in his backpack from school. It is a simplified version of the “Hungry Caterpillar” story that is written by Eric Carle. I thought this story would be a perfect story to adapt for Liam. I loved that the story included days of the week and counting; all things that Liam is working on in school. I also love the fact that it includes a cute caterpillar eating different foods because I knew my son would enjoy that.
Here are a few things I did to modify and adapt this story into something that is accessible and enjoyable for my son:
- Changed the foods to foods that I could easily find at home to glue on the pages, I chose foods that he would already know and that had a ‘fun tactile feel’ to it (I did make a trip to the ‘Dollar Store’ to get a few fun pieces like the ‘big apple’ and the ‘squishy grapes’.
- I added braille.
- I created a tactile ‘picture’ of the Hungry Caterpillar that can be used to act out the caterpillar eating the food on each page.
- I created the story on sturdy chipboard pages.
