I created the What Did They Meet? books for my Pre-K 4 student who is just beginning to learn braille. These books can be used to teach a variety of pre-braille skills. I created two versions, one with a tactile tracking grid that I made from plastic cross stitch canvas, and the other with braille.
I also made tactile/textured squares with Velcro that the student can use to represent the people, places, and animals in the book. The books can also be used to teach positional terms. My student loves this book and we do this activity everyday.
I used a commercially available book called Farm Babies that includes buttons to push to hear the sounds the baby animals make. I added braille lines and textures to the pages of the book.
I used this activity to work on tracking and positional concepts. The student practiced finding the braille number (with extra spacing around the number) while tracking the braille. The order of animals in the book matches that number in the sound buttons grid. The grid is set-up just like a braille cell, bonus! So, animal #1 equals dot 1 of the cell, and is a fun way to reinforce learning of dot numbers.
