Celebrate World Braille Day!

January 4th is World Braille Day and the birthday of braille inventor Louis Braille. At Anchor Center, we foster early literacy in our specially designed Braille Literacy Room. We provide pre-braille and pre-reading in our Toddler Program and braille and story time in our Preschool Program. Here are some pictures of braille in action at Anchor Center!!

“We like to expose our children as early as possible to braille and tactile representations. It’s important that our children begin early to understand symbolic representations in order to learn braille and print. Also, for preschool, it’s important that we work to support our children to be on target for learning the alphabet, their names, and some sight (braille) words. Some children do use their vision as a way of learning but fatigue easily so braille is still taught as another way to supplement learning in literary form.” Anchor Center Teacher Callie Robinson, TSVI 

BRAILLE FACTS that you can share to spread awareness!

• Braille was based on a tactile military code called night writing, that was developed in response to Napoleon’s demand for a means for soldiers to communicate silently at night and without a light source.
• Braille was developed in 1824 by Louis Braille, a 15 year old student at one of the first schools for blind children in the world, the Royal Institute for Blind Youth (now called the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris).
• Braille is not a language, it is a tactile alphabet. There are braille versions of just about every language, allowing people to write and read in their native language. Speak Spanish? Test your Spanish braille skills here!
• The two versions of braille are Contracted and Uncontracted. Most children start with Uncontracted braille, where every word is spelled out. Contracted braille uses abbreviations and contractions.

HAPPY WORLD BRAILLE DAY!!

DID YOU KNOW: Anchor Center relies on donor funding to help support our classrooms with items like Braillers – our organization is more than 90% funded by donations! Please consider giving a gift today to help provide bright futures to children with visual impairments.