

Pre-braille
Crossroads
Feel the one-way road. Add another brick to build a crossroads.
Find the apples and plant an orchard.
Imagine the brick as an apple tree, heavy with apples.
Feel the apples at the top of the tree, and the smooth trunk below them.
Then plant an orchard full of trees with their trunks at the bottom and their apples at the top.
To teach the child to orientate the brick in the reading position and to explore the whole baseplate.
a baseplate
10 x letter G in a bowl or a bag
1
Tell the child to pick an apple tree-brick from the bowl.
Ask to find the studs on the brick: “Here are the apples”.
Ask to touch the smooth part of the brick: “This is the trunk.”
2
Tell the child to attach the apple tree to the baseplate.
“Make sure your tree is not upside down! And plant as many trees as you can to make an orchard.”
Loris and Fadi wear funny hats because it was Loris’ birthday.
At the end of the activity, they check each other’s baseplate.
They have a top and a bottom, so I put on the board a ‘G’ with: Dot one, two, four, five.
Can you tell me where they are all the dots, up or down?
– Up.
All the way up. And what’s at the bottom?
– Just empty space.
-Can you show Loris?
So here are the dots.
-Yes.
Feel them.
Yes.
-And here we can see: there’s nothing!
What letter is that?
It’s the ‘G’.
Yes, can you tell me the dots?
-One, two, four, five.
We’re going to imagine that it’s not a LEGO brick, it’s a an apple tree.
Yes, and the little dots at the top, what are they?
Those are the apples.
That’s great. So the apples in an apple tree,
Would they be at the bottom of the tree?
-No. At the top!
-At the very top of the tree. That means that in your bowl, you have lots and lots of apple trees,
and I want you to come and plant them here.
We imagine this is a big meadow and we’re going to put in lots of apple trees.
You have your apple tree tank and Loris has his own.
And I’m watching you plant the apple trees.
Have we found apple trees that only have two apples?
Loris?
-Oh yes, I’ve got one!
Everywhere, everywhere in the meadow.
That’s what I’m doing right now.
-That’s great!
I’m done.
That’s it, finished! Fantastic! That’s great!
To make the activity more challenging, choose others LEGO Braille Bricks, not only G.
To make it easier, pre-plant apple trees on the base plate.