Let the Braille Games begin

Quick. How many people do you need for a team at a Braille Game?

Whitney, me and the Braille crew. Photo by Richard Robbins.

Six, of course. One for each dot in a Braille cell.

Whitney and I learned that, among many, many other things, at our very first ever Braille Games competition in Milwaukee last Friday. A story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel explains:

Teams of students rotated from table to table in a made-up world where Braille is written on money, on pizza boxes and orange juice bottles from the grocery store, on clothes in a department store, on “Go Fish” cards and other games.

Braille Games participants came from schools all over southeast Wisconsin, and all of them had significant visual impairments. As Judy Killian, a Braille teacher from Madison, pointed out in the newspaper article, blindness can be very socially isolating. “After this, they’ll be really enthused,” she told the reporter. “It gets them pretty excited about learning Braille.”

Teams of six spent their morning buzzing from table to table to play Braille bingo, spin a Wheel of Fortune, and spend Braille money on groceries marked with Braille labels. My favorite game was Human Braille Cell, and to help you know how it’s played, here’s a beginner’s understanding of what a Braille cell is made of:

• A Braille cell is six dots arranged in two columns of three dots, just like the number six on a pair of dice.
• To make writing and referencing Braille symbols easier, each dot in the Braille cell has a number.
• Down the left hand side, starting from the top, the dots are numbered 1, 2, 3.
• Down the right hand side, again starting from the top, the dots are numbered 4, 5, 6.

The letter “A” in Braille is only one dot, and it’s the one on the very top of the left hand side, dot one. The letter “L” is a straight line down the lefthand side, dots one, two, and three.

To play Human Braille Cell, each team of six sits in two rows of three. You know, just like the Braille cell. When the emcee calls out “A,” the kid representing Dot One jumps up like a jack-in-the-box. If the emcee calls out “L,” the three kids representing dots one, two, and three all jump up at once. The June Taylor Dancers had nothing on these kids.

Whitney and I didn’t compete, but I’d say we won the best prize of all: we got to meet every kid there! Each one came to our table to have me sign (in Braille, of course) their grand prize for participating: a Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to read at home.

A big shout-out to my children’s book publisher, Blue Marlin Publications, and to each of you who have purchased copies of the print version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in the past. Blue Marlin Publications donates a portion of the proceeds from every print book sold to Seedlings Braille Books for Children to help them produce high-quality Braille books for children who can’t read print.