The Braille Pals Buzz

The Braille Pals Buzz
Volume 1, Issue 7

What's Buzzing with the NFB Braille Reading Pals Team?

The NFB Braille Reading Pals Club is designed for blind children who are pre-readers and are not yet capable of reading Braille independently because of their age. Through this program, we encourage your child’s exposure to Braille and offer you tips to help promote your child's learning and love of Braille at an early age. However, when your child goes to school and begins to read independently, we have another program that may be more appropriate. It is the NFB Braille Readers Are Leaders program. We mention this program to you as the registration for the 2010 contest is now open. Braille Readers Are Leaders is a national contest for Braille reading students in grades kindergarten through twelfth, and all adult Braille readers. The purpose of the program is to promote the joy of reading for pleasure, to promote a pride in Braille as a viable literacy medium equal to print, and to demonstrate the importance of independent reading in the development of Braille literacy skills. Is your child ready for competitive reading? Does your child need to be challenged? If so, have your child participate in Braille Readers Are Leaders rather than the Braille Reading Pals Club. In either program, your child will have the opportunity to keep reading Braille! If you are a parent who is learning to read Braille yourself, you may also want to participate in the adult contest as a beginner, even if your child is not yet old enough for this program. Please check out the program Web site to learn more.

Literacy Hints from the Hive

Featuring monthly practical and simple tips to foster a love of literacy in your child

Tips for Reading with Preschoolers

Here are more excellent pre-reading tips! These ideas are for all preschoolers, blind or sighted. After displaying the tips, you will find some simple adaptations you can make from these suggestions for your blind preschooler. The following information is taken directly from Preschoolers Get Ready to Read: How Parents Can Help Their Preschoolers Learn to Read (Shining Stars, National Institute for Literacy, April 2007).

Please note that at the end of this section, we have provided some simple adaptations to these tips to make them more meanigful and accessible to blind and low-vision children.

Checklist for Parents of Preschoolers

Here are some ways you can help your child "get ready to read" during the ages of four and five. The passage in the article named above gives examples from a specific book mentioned in that article. However, the same techniques can be applied to a variety of children’s books.

  • I help my child hear and say the first sound in words (like "b" in boat) and notice when different words start with the same sound (like "boat" and "book").
  • I help my child hear words that rhyme (like moose, goose, and caboose).
  • I introduce new words to my child, like "bow" and "stern," which mean the front of a boat and the back of a boat.
  • I talk with my child about the letters of the alphabet and notice them in books, like "c" for canoe.
  • I point out signs and labels that have letters, like street signs and foods in the grocery store.
  • I encourage my child to find the joy and fun in reading. Usually, I let my child choose the books we read.
  • I let my child pretend to read parts of the book when we read together.
  • I talk with my child about stories and make connections to things that happen in our own lives.
  • I ask "what," "where," and "how" questions when I read with my child to help them follow along and understand the stories.
  • I help my child write notes or make books (like an alphabet book), even if their writing only looks like scribbles or marks.

To read the rest of the publication, go to

Adaptations: Only two of the tips listed above need to be adapted for blind children. Here are some suggestions.

  • I point out signs and labels that have letters, like street signs and foods in the grocery store.

Adaptation: I read signs to my child and talk about them so he knows what is in the environment around him. When I go to the grocery store, I show foods to my child, even though he can’t see the labels. It is important that he knows what different foods look like. I also tell him what letters the street names and objects in his environment start with, like apple starts with A and McDonalds starts with M.

  • I help my child write notes or make books (like an alphabet book), even if his writing only looks like scribbles or marks.

Adaptation: I help my child make notes and write alphabet books using a slate and stylus or Braillewriter, even if he doesn’t know all of his Braille letters.

Sweet Sweet Braille

"The Blessing of Braille" by Adam Rushforth is a short story in The Lessons of the Earth, one of the books in our Kernel Book series. The Kernel Books are a series of books about blind men and women that talk about what blindness is and what it isn't. These books are good to share with people you meet who know nothing about blindness. In addition to reading Adam's story, we encourage you to read the other stories in the Kernel Book series and pass them along to friends and family. You can order them from The Independence Market.

Buzzes and Tweets

Promote access to science education for blind students. Vote for the NFB Youth Slam in the Pepsi Refresh Project, or text 101913 to Pepsi (73774). Even though your child is too young to participate in the NFB Youth Slam, the work and developments from this program will beneifit your child’s access to scientific fields in the future. Please lend your support to improve education for the blind and vote for this project.

Be sure to go to NFB ShareBraille to get FREE children’s books. The number of children’s books on the site has increased in recent months, so check it out and start building your library.

Follow NFB_Voice on Twitter to get news and information from the National Federation of the Blind.

Follow BrailleLiteracy on Twitter to get timely Braille news, information, and tips.

Braille Bee Book Review

Instead of focusing on a specific book this month, we recommend you read"Analyzing and Selecting Children’s Picture Books That Feature Blind Characters" by Barbara Cheadle, which was published in the most recent edition of Future Reflections. Barbara Cheadle is the mother of a grown blind son and the founder of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC). She is currently pursuing a degree in library sciences with a concentration in children's and youth services. She has a great perspective on the types of attitudes that are portrayed in children’s literature about blindness.

Questions for the Queen Bee

Q: How often should I read to my child?

A: We recommend that you read to your child daily. Frequent encounters with books show your child that reading is valuable and enjoyable. Try making story time a daily routine for the whole family.

Books for Busy Bees

Sighted children have access to print books all around them. It is important to offer our blind children the same exposure. Here are several sources for obtaining Braille books.

The Braille Storybook Resources page has a comprehensive list of sources for Braille books.
NFB ShareBraille

NFB ShareBraille is a free service that facilitates the exchange of Braille books through a community-run library. Go online to trade your Braille books or to request books from other NFB ShareBraille users.

American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults (AAF)
Free Braille Books Program

1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, MD21230
Phone: (410) 659-9314, extension 2287
Fax (410) 659-5129
E-mail:

Selected popular children’s reading series (currently Jigsaw Jones Mystery® chapter books for grades 2-4; Matt Christopher sports books for grades 5 and up; and a sampler set of chapter books from four different series including SpongeBob SquarePants®, Franny K. Stein, Mad Scientist, My Weird School, and Ready Freddy) are available free to blind children, teachers, libraries, etc. The books are mailed out every month so that blind children can have them at the same time that sighted children can buy the books in the bookstore.
NFB Independence Market

200 East Wells Streetat Jernigan Place
Baltimore, MD21230
Phone: (410) 659-9314, ext. 2216
Fax: (410) 685-2340
E-mail:

The National Federation of the Blind Independence Market offers blindness-related literature, resources, and products as a service to individuals who are blind or experiencing vision loss, to their friends and families, and to the general public.

The Braille Reading Pals Club is sponsored in part by the NOPBC and the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults (AAF)