I have a young braille reader who is now in the third grade and is a brailling machine! I will call this student D for privacy reasons. I will be referring to her often in my posts about Wacky Wednesdays in particular because these are the lessons in which we have the most fun together and can be silly while working on some key concepts and skills. I have had the pleasure of working with her since she was 4 years old when I started collaborating with her preschool braille teacher as she was working towards transitioning to our School Age division in which I teach.
When D was in Kindergarten, I was seeing her 4 days a week for an hour at a time. Every day during our lessons, D would ask to color or draw which is one of her most favorite things to do with the very little vision she has. I would always try and get a little more work out of her and try and dedicate the last 5-10 minutes of our lesson as “choice” time for her which would include coloring, stringing pretty beads, playing with a box of small toys I had brought in or telling me a story.
D started bargaining with me to try and get more “play” time in our lessons. Eventually, we came up with the plan that if she accomplished all of the goals I set for her in my lessons for the week, on Fridays she could have 20 minutes of a fun activity that I would plan for her. This was a great motivator for her during the week, and we were both happy! As a result our “Fun Fridays” were born.
As D has gotten older, our time together is now squished into 3 days a week for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I do not see her on Fridays any longer so our Fun Fridays have morphed into “Wacky Wednesdays”. I am going to try and post on Wednesdays the activity we do together each week. I will also be highlighting some of the games that I created for her that she used the previous years for you to check out.
I hope that some of the ideas and activities I post you can use with your students as well and you can create your own style of Wacky Wednesday fun!
I Love Brl (Braille) 