Winter Tactile Experience Book: Snow, Snow, What Do You See?

This winter-themed book is an adapted kindergarten classroom activity and has tactile components to enhance the learning of concepts related to winter clothing and winter necessities (hat, scarf, boots, white cane).  In this activity, the student reads the book and explores a single object correlating to each page. The final page allows the student to “dress” a tactile snowman.

Materials

• Printable PDF “Snow, Snow, What Do You See”
• 7 sheets of braille paper for printing the PDF book and 1 additional Braille paper for creating snowman.
• Braillewriter or Slate & Stylus for adding braille to pages.
• Felt material and craft pom for hat, fleece for scarf, rubbery/plastic-y material (rubbery placemat works well) for boots. Cut to shape.
• Cheap plastic paintbrush or other short, thin rod for creating a miniature white cane.  I added a hoop of black elastic (glued into hole that I pulled the bristles out of) and a round bead at the thin end of the paintbrush.  I also wrapped the top portion of the cane with white tape.
• Sheet of packing foam (often shipped with APH/Braille book shipments) for forming large, medium and small circles of snowman body and 2 snowflakes on the front of the book.  Pipe cleaner for snowman’s arms.
• Embellishments to create snowman’s face (I used assorted beads I had lying around the house).
• Book binding (comb style), thin binder or stapler to assemble book. 
• Baggie to keep accompanying tactile materials
• Craft glue and scissors

Procedure

1. Print out and braille the book onto standard braille paper or colored cardstock.
2. Cut out tactile materials to correlate with each page: foam snowflakes, felt hat w/pom-pon on top, fleece scarf, rubbery/plastic-y boots and foam circles (large, medium and small) for snowman.  Cut parallel vertical slits in middle circle of snowman’s body to feed pipe cleaner through, leaving 1-2″ of pipe cleaner showing on either side to act as arms/hands.
3. Round up embellishments for snowman (beads, whatever you’d like to use) for creating a face or other details for your snowman.  Use craft glue to affix snowman and embellishments to blank braille paper/cardstock.
4. Glue 6-point snowflakes (different designs to demonstrate uniqueness of each snowflake) to front page of book.
5. Place hat, scarf, boots and cane in baggie or small box to accompany story.
6. Student will accumulate the tactile accessories as the story progresses and can “dress” the snowman on the final page.
7. PDF View of Completed Book