Braille: Minute to Win It

I know it's way past Valentine's Day, but hey, St. Patrick's Day is coming up.  I thought I'd share how I modified a Minute to Win It Board so that Gabby (the child in my class who is blind and has CP) could play with the class on Valentine's Day.  Maybe, this might spark an idea for someone else for a St. Patrick's Day idea or an upcoming Easter idea.

I found this board on Pinterest.  It came from Teaching Heart Blog.






I wanted my class to be able to play the game, but I needed to change it a bit for Gabby.  Here's what we came up with.

We just took some cafeteria straws and glued them to vellum to created a raised space for Gabby to put all of her candy items.  Then we brailled the amount and the item name so she would know what belonged in each area.  (Since Gabby has limited motor control, I also didn't have her stack or try to place things within small isolated areas.  If she got it into the right section, it counted.)  There's nothing fancy or pretty about this board, but it did give Gabby access to the game and allowed her to play! Can you tell we took the pictures AFTER she played with it and got chocolate smudges everywhere?  :-)

Finally, for the class as a whole, I told them we were going to see if we could all complete this in one minute.  If one child finished, she was encouraged to cheer on her classmates.  (I still have some very young students in my room, so I try to limit the competitive aspect of games and focus on the participation and teamwork.)

Many thanks to Colleen at Teaching Heart Blog for her awesome freebie!

Note to Colleen:  I tried to leave a comment on your original page on your blog  to ask permission if I could publish this post with attribution back to you.  For some crazy reason, it kept giving me an error message and wouldn't submit.  If this post in anyway makes you uncomfortable, please let me know I will take it down!