Going to Friend’s House

My daughter's braillest, Ms. B., sent an email during the first days after schools had closed from COVID-19 with a suggestion for my daughter.   She told her they could play, "Going to Friend's House" via email.   She started the game by telling a story about Jessica Jaguar and all the J letter things they ate and did.

My daughter was excited to reply but balked when I told her she should type it all out on her braillewriter after she said she wanted me to type the email for her.  She said, "but mom, we don't type it, it's a game we play while we wait for the cab to arrive."   Ah, now I understood why she would want me to respond for her—it was more of a mental game than one of writing.

Here's the first Going to Friend's House my daughter sent back to Ms. B.:

We are going to Penguin’s House.
The penguin’s name is Paddy Patil.
For breakfast, we will have cold pumpkin juice and puffin cereal.
Inbetween breakfast and lunch we’ll play with Penguin’s puppy.
The puppy’s name is Pete the Pouncer.
For lunch, we are going to have Pizza with Perrier water. (mom’s suggestion)
In between lunch and dinner, we will go and watch a parade and we will play ping pong and pinball.
We will play pass the parcel. We got presents when we played pass the parcel.
We got pop candy, pretzels, and pencils
For dinner we are going to have pasta with Parmesan cheese.
For our drink, we will have [Alexa, what drinks start with P?] pink lemonade
For dessert, we will have pear popsicles.
We are going to have a sleepover with pillows and presents and a big party.
And for our special treat, we had popcorn!
The End.

If you've met my daughter for any period of time you know she is verbose.  She had a good time coming up with ideas.   I helped a bit, but mostly this was all her unless she asked me (or Alexa).
I sent that email on April 1st.   Yesterday, eight days later, my daughter can type and respond to the next round herself with this:

Dear Ms. B
We are going to Sally sloths house
For Dear Ms. Sample, I miss you. What is going on? I love you! I can even write this, !@#$%^&*()_++= What are you doing all these waeeks? I miss you soooooooo! Much, love Reesebreakfast we will have sticky buns and samosa’s! We will swing and sing! For lunch we will have salad and sunflower seeds. Next we will swim and go to a surprize party and we will skip rope. For dinner we will have soup and spaghetti and sarsaparilla soda. For dessert we will have spice drops. We will sing songs all sleep. The end

She typed that, with corrections in about ten minutes.  I think she benefitted from autocorrect in a few places.   She turns on Voiceover on my Mac when she starts typing.   It speaks to her everything she types and does, including autocorrect suggestions.   The story though was all her with the exception of my idea of sarsaparilla, which thankfully autocorrect saved me on since I have not the slightest clue how to spell correctly.

Back to my daughter.   In seven days she's learned how to touch type.   She can't cheat it like a sighted child can because she can't see the keys.   She orients herself on the keyboard by feeling for the little raised mark on the F and J keys.   Check your keyboard, they all have them.   Today, one day later, she sent this email to her VI teacher, Ms. Sample telling her about the number shift characters she's been learning about.

Dear Ms. Sample, I miss you. What is going on? I love you! I can even write this, !@#$%^&*()_++= What are you doing all these waeeks? I miss you soooooooo! Much, love Reese

If she keeps continuing learning typing at this pace I'm going to just let her take over the blog.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is doing an admirable job of working at home.   We have a modified school schedule which starts at nine o'clock and ends at three o'clock.   The work my son's teachers have sent home has been similar, but not exactly the same.  My son works well in the prepared environment that is his classroom.   He hates noise when he's working.   He's accustomed to an almost silent Montessori classroom during their, "work cycle" work periods.  My daughter is rarely silent.  

The Tiny Gitl Chronicles: My daughter had a guest teacher today, Shane from next door.   She got to show Shane how her school works and what she does with math, reading, completing work using the braillewriter.   I even gave her a fun piece of work where she used braille characters to draw a large picture of a dragon.