Brailler

My daughter is getting proficient using her braille machine at a remarkable speed.   To type a braille “cell” you need to remember the configuration of six dots corresponding to the letter in the alphabet, punctuation or letter.  Some things, like letters, take two braille cells to indicate.   As a sighted person we remember the shape of a letter, as a blind person, you remember the dots and their positions that represent the letter.

My daughter has almost the entire alphabet memorized with a few uncommonly used letters she needs reminders on.   She has a good memory, which helps her a lot.   Today my best friend and I went running and afterwards I asked my daughter if she wanted to show her how she could type on the brailler, asking her if she wanted to spell Eleanor’s name.

I gave her the letter combination only twice and then she was busy typing not on Eleanor’s name, but sentences including it such as, “mom and Eleanor ran”.   Then she wanted to type Eleanor’s children’s names.  I wasn’t paying attention until she called me over, asking if she’d spelled Ellie’s name correctly.   She phonetically written ‘Elie’, including the capital indicator for the first letter.   She’s just recently started phonetically spelling things and typing them on the brailler—all after three weeks of kindergarten.

We’re still working on her tactile recognition of braille letters, something that seems a lot harder to me as well, but I have a feeling once she gets a little more skill she’s going to be a quick reader.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was getting tired of being on the boat yesterday and wanted to come back to the house.   The weather was calm and the boat wasn’t rocking but he was just done, cold and wanted to get into the house and back to regular clothes.   He started off with, “I’m getting lake sick” and when that didn’t work he decided he was, “getting boat sick”.   Fortunately for him we were heading in just about then.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s class is learning the alphabet through a method called Letterland.   There is a character and song for each letter.   She likes the songs so much she wanted to spend her pom pom money to get a collection of apps all about the Letterland characters.   She’ll have her headphones on and you can hear her singing away to each letter in the alphabet.   She likes to show us the pictures and tell us about each of the letters when she knows one of us is near.

Running:  I ran ten miles today.   I’m not trained up for the marathon we’ve signed up for in early November, but the ten miles wasn’t overly difficult today, even though we ran it fairly slowly.