Experiencing Braille

Yesterday afternoon, we took a little field trip to the downtown library, so I could show Blaze what real Braille books are like.



The massive tome he is feeling, with his eyes shut, is The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe written in Braille, because I wanted him to realize that books of every kind can be made that way. What we actually checked out, was Strega Nona, by Tomie de Paola, because it's a simple story, that he is already familiar with, which will make it easier to read both in printed words and braille.



We also checked out one book that was not written in Braille, but was about Louis Braille.

Reading the Annotated Alice

This week, as our bedtime story, we began reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, from The Annotated Alice.



I purchased this copy from "The Collector's Corner" of the Friends of the Library Book Sale a couple years ago, and I'm now very glad I did. Blaze is enjoying the silliness of the story, while I'm learning a lot from the annotations on the side column of each page.

Here is a perfect example of that:
"Bathing machines" had been mentioned in the book Starcross, which we read recently, and I had just imagined that they were beachside dressing rooms on wheels. The Annotated Alice goes into much greater detail on the subject, explaining that they were drawn by horses, down into the water, so as to provide more privacy for the bather. The doors of the bathing machine would be left open after the bather entered the water, to block the view from shore.





Alice Failing:





The Muppets Jabberwocky:

A Candy Jar for Valentine's Day

About a month ago, we were looking at some apothecary jars and DH told me he would like to have some someday, because he likes the way they look. For Valentine's Day, I decided to start his collection. I purchased a jar at Michael's, filled it with candy, and made a label for it. I found the label design as a free printable graphic here:

http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/2010/03/free-vintage-clip-art-fancy-frame.html

If you have never seen The Graphic Fairy website before, I highly encourage you to spend some time browsing. It's full of wonderful vintage graphics, and more are being added all the time.

Here is the finished label:



and here is the whole jar:

Scenes from the 2011 Hoggetowne Medieval Faire

It rained for awhile this morning, but stopped by Noon, so Blaze and I were able to go enjoy the last day of the Medieval Faire.



















The Living Chessboard:







These guys are probably the hardest working people at the faire.





They not only keep the swings going, but run around spinning the individual swing seats to make the ride more fun.

Seeing and Loss of Sight

We have continued learning about eyes.

We read this book:



and then we began learning about what it would be like if we couldn't see. This is a subject of some interest to Blaze, since the eye doctor scared him quite a bit during his last check-up. We have always known that Blaze had scar tissue behind his right eye, that caused a blind spot, but none of the previous eye doctors have ever told him that it was vitally important to keep his left eye safe before. She told him that if anything happened to that left eye, he would be blind. Needless to say, his anxiety level went way up for awhile, and we have had to talk about this a lot.


To begin with, we threw a bean bag back and forth, seeing how well we could catch it. Then we tried playing catch with the bean bag with our eyes closed.



The bean bag made some noise as it flew through the air or hit things, which meant we had some idea of where it was, but were still unable to catch it. We did a little better with throwing, than we did catching (we hit each other several times with the beanbag).


Next, we watched this movie about the life of Louis Braille.

The story of Louis Braille (with captions and descriptions):



The Braille Alphabet:



To make our Braille alphabet have the raised letters it's supposed to have, we put a dot of 3D fabric paint on each dot of the alphabet.



Later this week, we will be watching the story of Helen Keller, before we go on to learning about ears and hearing.

The story of Helen Keller:














A film of the real Helen Keller and her wonderful teacher, Anne Sullivan:

Eyes

For Science we have begun, what will probably be, a very lengthy unit about the human body.
I decided to begin with the five senses, sight in particular, so this past week, we were learning about eyes.

We started this unit by watching the DVD of Bill Nye the Science Guy: Eyeballs ( after all, Blaze is a very visual learner).





I found this printable page in an old copy of (the now defunct) Copycat magazine, a teachers' magazine, at the library.




This website has good information about eyes, at an older elementary school level. It also has a read-aloud feature, where the child can listen to the article being read, while each word is highlighted. This would be great for children with a reading disability, except for the fact that the voice is very monotone and robotic sounding.

http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/eyes.html

We also read the following books:

Painting Plaster People

At school this week, the children in the Older Elementary (3rd-5th grade) began painting plaster models of the heads, skulls, and tools of 4 species of our early ancestors, using this kit:





The ultimate goal will be to post them all on a tri-fold poster board display, that also explains what they all are.



While I was making some of the plaster of Paris models, I made a set of just the Australopithecus head, skull, and stone tool, to bring home for Blaze to paint. He and I decided to clean off the small bookshelf in his bedroom, so that he can turn it into his own little natural history museum. The plaster Australopithecus will be the first exhibit.

Later addition to this post...

Just before bed tonight, Blaze finished painting his plaster Australopithecus. He mixed all the colors and did all the painting, except for the facial hair and eyes, which he asked me to do. I think they came out really good. I especially like the way the skull looks aged. He painted it with antique white first, then painted the teeth, eye sockets and a few other spots with brown, then rubbed it with a dry paper towel to take away most of the brown.