 I just contacted Sandra a year, almost a year ago, and I'm so excited that the day has come when we can finally hear her presentation as she talks to us about, on the topic of modifying and creating accessible material for the channel of the loss. So I'm going to take a more of Sandra's precious time with us. So, Jane, welcome, Sandra, and I think we're going to treat you today. I wanted to welcome all of you to Accessible Books and Literacy, supporting and encouraging a lot for literacy. Sandy Kenrick, I live in Rapid City, South Dakota, and that, if you're not familiar with the area, is where Mount Rushmore is located. I'm going to try to turn my slide here, a little slow. Let's see. Well, I was waiting to flip over. Hopefully it worked for me. A little bit about myself. I have taught nine years in general education classrooms. I did about six years of elementary education, so that's eight and nine-year-olds. I taught in third grade, and then I am currently teaching high schoolers American Sign Language. I know why my screen is not turning here. Of course, before all of you came in, it worked fine. Let's try to flip over. There we go. I don't know what happened there. Well, this is my family. I just want to introduce my two boys. The oldest one who's standing up next to me there. His name is Liam. He is seven years old. He attends a mainstream classroom. He's in second grade. He is deaf-blind. My youngest one who's on my lap there, he's four years old. His name is Finn. He has typical vision and hearing. Let's talk about Liam a little bit. He was born with typical vision and hearing. He was born healthy. Healthy boy. When he was two years old, he came sick with meningitis. He's two and a half years old. When that happened, we were arrested to a town about five hours away. We spent a few months in the hospital. We went to the hospital with complications due to the meningitis. When all was said and done, we brought home a boy who was deaf and blind. How did I get started creating accessible books? When we brought home Liam, I was about eight months pregnant with his little brother at the time, brought Liam home. One of the things he loved to do before he got sick was to read books. What are their favorite things to do? When we brought him home, now deaf-blind, he found his stack of books or his little box of books. I specifically remember him throwing them across the room. The books he loved had absolutely no meaning to him anymore. They were very frustrated into him that he couldn't see anything. In fact, later, he found a stack of books that doesn't have braille in it or tactile pictures. He wrote all the empty books, so he's not impressed. It was that moment that it was breaking to me, actually, bringing him his books. I decided from that moment on, I was going to make reading, except I was going to make it fun again. Somehow, I didn't know how, but I was going to make it where my little boy was going to be able to enjoy books again. So, I started with that picture I left of the little book with a star cookie cutter on it. I had to make a shapebook. The next thing I could think of, I knew if I wanted to draw pictures, he'd have to be able to see them. I know he was not a braille painter at the time, but I knew I wanted him to be, and he was going to be. So, I wanted to make sure that he had at least access to brands. So, my very first book, I found at a local bookstore, a cardboard book with some little rings to bind it, and I found whatever shapes that had a good feel to it. I glued it onto the book, so I had the star there. I had a heart that had these bumps all over it. I had a wooden, I think it was a circle, a bunch of shapes that had different feel to them. That would be fun and motivating for him to read and enjoy. I had time and knew absolutely nothing about braille that didn't have any access to a braille rate or anything like that. So, I contacted his T.V.I. and his teacher that was really impaired from his birth to, I think, three program it was at the time. And I asked him, if I gave you a list of words, would you be able to put them in the number label for me so I could add them to these books I'm making for Liam? And he, of course, said absolutely. So, that was my very first book I ever made right there with the shape book. My second one is the one on the right there. You'll see it's a counting book. I will make it interactive, so I just glued some different things. I used real-life items onto the pages that he could count. And then, of course, on the outside of the little flap there, you can't see it, but there's braille. All fluted is the sign language picture shown in the number four. And we were all learning sign language at the time. That's the language for our little guy. So, that, of course, is how I got started in accessible books. Those are my very first two ones I ever made for Liam. And just for one, he absolutely loved the books I made for him. He started to really listen to this day. Readings and braille are his absolute favorite thing to do again. So, very happy about that. Sharing ideas and strategies. So, when I started making my books, it was really hard for myself as a parent. I had no idea about it or where to start. And even looking online, I think I've grown up a lot since I started, but looking online, I couldn't find anything to help me get started. And I wanted to change that. I wanted to offer my ideas that I had and share them with families, with teachers and educators. Whoever is with a child or a vision of parents and didn't know where to start, I wanted to be able to share my ideas and put them out there. So, I talked to one of my states, an online outreach coordinator, and she hooked me up with a new website at the time. It was a newer website called Best of Literacy website. You'll see on the screen here the address for that website. And it's a great website supported by Perkins School for the Blind and Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. And that website actually there shows my link to all of my every strategy or book or anything that I posted is right on that link. My name that I go by is Lam's mom. So, I have kind of to be a great resource for you where you can get ideas, different ideas, and also where you can share your ideas. I wanted out today, but I'm just going to be talking a lot about ways that you can create accessible books and literacy materials and modify. But I want to start out with what I believe is extremely important in setting a great foundation for support. A lot of the literacy is to create an accessible environment. This really does include home environment, school, your church, community environment, anything that you can think of where a pile of vision impairment is going to be. I want you to be thinking about, is it accessible to them? So, I believe that we are, I've made at home our home accessible, our home environment accessible. We label everything in the house with Braille. And, of course, can be adapted if you're the child you're working with needs large print. It isn't quite reading Braille yet. You can pair it with tactile symbols or objects. But anything in the house that has, we, I'm sure to put in Braille's around the house. So, a couple of examples I just showed you. Here's our coat hooks. I told, you know, Liam gets his own hooks. Ben has his mom's hooks. Those switches say on and off. Our poster has a brand showing how is it with 124 that shows if you want it light toasted or really dark. The microwave numbers, if you see it, are really flat. So, we put brand there so he can help be a part of cooking. And that's accessible to him. So, you can think of to label that's meaningful. That's what we have done at our house. And I just find that I think is important that all children need a healthy rich environment in a format that is accessible to them. Here's what I've done at home. For the first time every year, I make Christmas labels to put on the presents. And it's like little gift pigs, because they're accessible to him. I put his name in Braille. I put little Christmas stickers that are tagged that he can see. And I've started also doing this for other people in the family. So, when it's time to pass out the guests at birthdays or Christmas, he can read who they go to and can be a part of helping passing those out. We've got a Candyland game. Boardrooms we try to make accessible so we can play all together as a family. So, I added Braille and some tactile pieces to that. The picture in our lower left is an Advent calendar. And those little circles, there's 12 out of them. And they're numbered one through 25. So, the first count down all the way to Christmas, you can add a little ornament. So, very hands-on, very accessible and tactile. The other thing he can touch. Another is just the environmentally cure. Then, once we add Braille to that, to house numbers, you can add Braille to anything that shows that Braille has power and has meaning. And that's accessible to him. One of my favorite things that I've had for Liam that includes Braille, putting Braille everywhere he can get his hands on is our new play set. I was able to find this website that made some nice sturdy outdoor Braille labels for me. And the one he's touching there on the left is, this is the word slide. The playground, you can see the fence surrounding the playground there. There's little wooden plaques that have Braille he can feel. Four of them have the four cardinal directions north, south, east, west. On the correct place on the fence. So, great orientation mobility. We have that. We recently got this summer that has these nice outdoor labels as well. You can make the home accessible. This can, of course, be adapted for other situations too at school or at church. We've used them too. But there are, our example of our left one is actual real objects that you can put on this little chore chart or could be a schedule, whatever you want. So, I put it over to the sock there for what he helps fold laundry. And then the flowers for any waters with plants. Of course, it would be great to add the Braille to pair with that. To the right, the picture to the right is a more updated version of a chore chart where the magnets can be moved to done and finished. Everything is just in Braille there. We have moved to trend and from objects being done to now just Braille. So, whatever's appropriate for your career working with, it can be easily modified. The impairment is, well, a big one, that along with it is necessarily a very accessible place, at least not in a mainstream classroom like my son has. It's first not the most accessible place for a child with vision impairments. Here are some examples of what we've done. Of course, everything should be labeled in Braille, all doors. Everything labeled in the classroom and print should also be labeled in Braille as spot where he can touch it. This calendar I made for him was one, I think it was last year, where it included Braille with the symbols. And then when the kids did classroom calendar together, he could have his calendar with and be following along with them. We pull dates on the calendar or events that happen each day on the calendar. For example, on Mondays with libraries, it's a piece of a cardboard like his books. For P, on Tuesdays, a gym. It's a little piece of a rubber ball cut out and glued on there. The little wood sticks you see is for music days, because he gets to play on the little xylophone with the wooden mallet, so that represented music for him as well. Now we, of course, have transitioned to his, he's improving in his Braille skills. We've transitioned to the calendar. The calendar is a little smaller, still fairly big, but includes Braille only. The left is really fun. This one is in turn, I believe. He's in second grade now, but when he was five years old, his little friends in his classrooms would write him the sweetest little notes and draw pictures for him. And they were learning to write, so they'd have some simple sentences there. It was really kind of his friends to write that. There was no meaning to them. It was just the blank pieces of paper again. So I created this bucket of notes for Liam to bring to school that included a bunch of fun stickers that were fun to touch, so they could create pictures with them. They also put these Braille labels in there, so different words, so the kids could use the words and create sentences out of them. So they were working, the students were working there, writing skills as well as and reading, as well as Liam was going to be able to do that. It was included and accessible and inclusive and accessible. So that's another way to make his environment something that works for everybody. Right, so first, here's desk schedule. So as his teachers may have a schedule on, say, the whiteboard of what they're doing as a school for the day, Liam's is on his desk. This one has the Braille paired with objects and try to use real life when possible. For example, lunch, he has a fork, a piece of a fork broken off, recess, the rocks to present recess, because there's the rocks outside that they walk on. So that was just an example of, he gets to set it up each morning, how his schedule can be accessible for him. Tied community church stores, restaurants, all together. Church, we make sure he has a schedule that's very similar to what they have at school. I just mimicked it and Brian made one for church. He has labels, his materials are Braille. When the restaurant is not going to the stores, I try to make sure that he has a Braille list that makes it fun and motivating for him, but he gets to see again that Braille has meaning and power. And this school supply list I have made for him is to use actual real pictures paired with the Braille so he knew what we were looking for. So here we have the store buying his school supplies. So you have to find each item on the list. Now we've transitioned this year to a Braille-only list. This year we're transitioning to where he's actually writing the Braille list himself and bringing it with to the store. A lot of different options you can do. Start with the Sun Heart Modifying Books and then creating accessible literature. The need for accessibility, one of my big pushes especially in schools when he started Kindergarten, would get things like this home. A book with no bread, there would be worksheets and there would be classroom readers that needed to be outside for him. Of course he has a great team. There are a lot of his materials outside and created for him there, but then there are still some things that were coming home that weren't. So that's the team we sought need. Now I'm really pleased to say, three years later, we went down to a well-oiled machine and everybody does their part on the team and Liam is modified for him whether it's the Braille on the page or having to use objects to go with it, anything like that. But this child has an accessible material in classrooms at school. So that's a different the different books that were books that I'm being looking at today. I want to talk about experience books, creating experience books, conversation boxes, story boxes, a story bag, child books, and adapting classroom readers and adapting science books and fiction readers. So I'm going to be starting with experience books. This one's one of my favorites. There are a lot of goals that can be met when creating experience books. First of all, it's of course going to be accessible and motivating for the child. That's one of my favorite things about it. An experience book is simply a book that is created about the child's experience from their experience. It can be recruited by you or the child, or both. But it's about their experience. They're experts. It makes it very motivating for them. And some of the learning goals that you can have for creating one of these books is there's a great one is if you have speech goals and my son at that time right there, I believe he's probably three and a half, maybe four. One of our goals was we're trying to get him to sign and engage in conversations back and forth. And so that would be a great speech goal where you could use this. One of the goals of course is reading, getting to some of the skills. And so experience books are great for this. This book that you can hear is he went to gymnastics. And so we wrote a book about his gymnastics experience. And I had on the front the blue foam there to represent the man. He had a ball pit that he could jump in that was like these foam cubes that he jumped into this pit of foam cubes. So we had, I had a foam piece of the foam cube that I glued onto the book. So when he wrote that part, he would actually feel the foam that he had jumped into. There was a pole that he swung from. So I had a pole in the book when it talks about him swinging. There was a beam that he walked across that was wooden, like this wooden plank. I put a small piece of wooden plank actually on the book. And there's a pole too, so they could come off. But it's a great thing to encourage conversation. It can be great for any goals you had if you're working on a specific vocabulary. But the biggest thing I can say is if you're having issues with having a kid that's just not motivated to read, I would strongly suggest an experience book. Very motivated because it's something about what they're interested in for one expert in it, which helps them to be successful in reading it. So I created an experience book using actual mementos from the experience. Plan ahead. When I know I want to make a book, for example, if we're going to the farm, I can tell you what kind of things do I want to collect. I have a special, I'll just sling across several of the things that I always take into consideration. We only use it when we're going to create a book. So he knows when I bring this thing out. We're going to be making a book after the experience, so that's just one idea. And so he knows if we're at the farm and we feed the cow some hay, we're going to put some hay in our water bag. If we have, if we ate some candy that we got there, we're going to put the wrapper in there. If we ate anything that we used, we're going to put it in this bag. So he knows that that's going to be used. That's part of our routine as part of the book. So he had what's the experience, what you want to highlight, what do you think is going to be the most memorable and meaningful so that you can know what to remember to collect. So like I said, I wrote again to bring the bag to collect him in. I like across the chest because with mine, he definitely requires two hands when we're out and about. If a child is not present to make the book, it can be made ahead of time when they're not there. If you want to make part of it and they help make part of it, there are different options there. The book we made was a bowling book, just another example of an experience book. And if you want to see more, I had a lot of videos of this up on that pass the literacy website I was telling you about. I don't have time to share all that now, but if you want more into depth in these, if you're wanting more information, but here's the objectives I had for the bowling book we made for him. Liam will be able to use the bowling book as a tool to share his experience. Liam will be able to read the story to himself using contractions like go, and I've been learning at school, so I wanted to make a book that supported his learning at school. And then for modifying objectives, you can focus on vocabulary, communication goals, or in a story and see these books can be taken apart and you can work on beginning, middle, and end if that's one of your goals. It also can be used for reading or retelling any event. So this is what was in our bowling book. Liam, these are the five highlights I picked. Is he ate pizza, drank a pop? He got to bowling shoes. He's able to carry his bowling ball to the ramp and push the ball. He got to feel a big pin, and then he had little toy pins in the ball to play with when he was there, and he got to visit with friends. So I wanted to make sure to include all of those in his book. And so the page is just of the book. So we had the bowling pins on the front cover, which compared to the bigger pins. So if you knew the difference between the toy pins and the real one, we had a shoe that kind of felt like the bowling shoe. We had a, I say, part of the cup from his pop and the plate for the pizza. So where I could, I used real life objects. When I couldn't, I improvised, like with the puppy paint ball in the corner. But ideally, you want to try to use real life objects when you can. And really, the highlight about experienced books is it's an opportunity to share. So we always want to share with a friend, or especially grandma. So he was able to share about the next day he wanted to bring it to school. He was able to bring it to school and read it to his friends. So what a motivating way for him to help a child who just loves reading. He's been reading books about trains, just another example there. He got to go to an 1880s train. He loved it. You can see the smile on his face sitting next to his grandpa with his, the window open there. He got to feel the breeze going through this train. And so I actually brought the book. This was made ahead of time because I knew what we were, we were going to be doing it. You have to read the book on the train. That's one conversation box. What is the conversation box? Any speech teachers here? You'll really love this one, especially. It's a box of items. In this case, items about a shared experience that a learner can use to have a conversation with someone about the items. So on the picture on the right is my son, Liam, when he was just a little guy. He might have been three or four there. And he is making toast. And that's actually his interpreter there over at the house some summer. And they're making toast together. And so when the experience was over, I had gathered items so they could have a conversation about it later. At this point, Liam was just relearning another language. Before he got sick, he spoke English. After, when he became deafblind, his new language is American Sign Language. So he is starting over. We're trying to teach him all these vocabulators and teach it through experiences. And another way to encourage that, again, was a motivating activity. And he had to use this box with the objects too. So we have a gold jar and a little plastic spoon to represent the jelly that he used. We had a little toaster, a play toaster. We had a plate that he used, a washcloth because it got really sticky. So think about things that him and his interpreter will be able to talk about at school the next day about that experience. It's something he already is the expert in and knows about. I don't know if you can quite see on the picture, but it's a little strip of labels of Braille. So you could add that just to give more exposure to Braille. So I said things like jelly, plate, toaster, knife. So just more exposure to Braille is always good, even if your child is a Braille reader yet. The next little conversation box is the farm. I collected some items like hay, bear, mugs, and Ireland, and this big corn pit. So I collected some corn so we could talk about that. Liam with his big pumpkin there. In the box there is the pumpkin stem because he ripped the stem off right away. So all these momentums where we can just, it encourages him to have this chat about the farm trip that we had. Another one of my very favorite. A story box is simply a collection of objects and symbols that are used in telling a story. Stories are a great way to make pictures come alive for our children with vision impairments. That of Liam getting to explore a story box that I made for him. And literally the face I get every time he gets a new book. He just loves reading. Recently, a story box called Clifford's Bedtime. So I have a book that is Braille. Sometimes even necessarily you can have the book or not have the book. You can tell a story with them. I have the book here and it's Braille. And it's about Clifford and his mom and mom's putting into bed at bedtime. So Clifford's in his bed and he needs his toy bear. He needs his toy, his doll. He needs a drink of water. He needs his blanket. So when I told this story with Liam, I would follow along on the book if he wanted to. And I was just telling him the story, having fun with it. And he sat in a bed since the story took place in Clifford's bed. And we would give Clifford a toy bear. We'd give him the doll when the story came to it. We had him drinking water. We get to put blankets on everything. So it's just a fun way to engage him in the story. And he loved it. And another great thing about story boxes is that it allows children, even if they aren't able to read quite yet, it allows them to retell the story to somebody else as well, using the objects themselves. Here's what I've done. The picture on the right is called Owl Babies. It's about a mom and her three little baby owls. Mom goes away hunting and the three babies are worried and wondering where mom is. And this one, I wanted to just quickly throw together for Liam. Liam doesn't have any braille on it because the book meant where I know the story was going to be read. And I found out kind of last minute that this was the book that was going to be read to the whole group of kids. And so I quickly found out all three babies and a stick in my backyard so that when we went to the event, Liam put it in the story but also the pictures as well. The picture on the left is a way to store some story boxes that are kind of, that are fun. I had stackable plastic boxes and stack, if that's four stories there. I also put it on the outside of the box. It tells that the top one is about a boat so it's a boat story. And then I actually have a picture glued to it too. A picture that tells the story and the braille and print as well so that Liam, when he wanted to go into the closet and find a book to read, he can easily find which one he wants by peeling the outside labeled box. It's accessible to him. Talk about the actual sharing part of Story Boxes brief. We can talk about that. This is how I've done it and found success in it, but of course it can be modified to whatever works. The child you're working with is how, before you do it, it's really important to think about how you're going to organize your story, your Story Box. Are you going to lay out the items next to you so you can give them to the child as you're reading when it's time, so it's nice to have it organized. Are you going to keep them in the box and when it's time for it, the child picks them up for you or does it or you find them together. So you kind of want to think about that ahead of time. So that's the organizing. What do you do when the objects are done? How are you going to lay it so that the transitions of the story moves smoothly? What you're saying with sharing your Story Box with the child is, first, allow the child to explore the items in the box. Then talk about them. Give them information about them. Talk about the characters. What is this? What does this represent? And then take time to introduce the story. Give a brief summary about what you're going to be reading about. Then you can take away the items if that's what you wanted it organized and tell the story together. The very last part of this is don't forget to provide the opportunity to share. They can read and tell it with you. They can go take that so you can share it with a classmate, with a friend, with a family member. So there will be different options. We're using a story box that's just a powerful way to pour it all up for literacy and make it engaging and fun. And of course, many different learning goals you have as far as literacy goals would go. So some tactile books and concept books. You'll get the book on the right. Let's just start with tactile books. Tactile books or graphics are basically just a graphic that you can touch. And so it makes touchable pictures, accept pictures for students. So you choose what you think would be the most important thing to take. You don't want your books to be too busy, but it would be the most important picture to highlight that they can feel and that can represent it. And then there's the sled book on the right, lower right there. It's got done sledding at the time. I got this cool thick hintrace to make smooth cream and glue or something, so it made this really cool textured thing for snow. And then I used a bag of butter container as the sled. That's the closest thing I could find that felt like the sled we had at home because we had just got done. I pulled around on the sled in our yard and so it was a great time to make a book about a sled. And this book actually was a big story box because it came with a guy, a little boy and his bear too that pulled the sled. So it's a little bit of both. The picture on the left is a concept book. You can make books that create and teach certain concepts that you're trying to do that are part of your goals. For example, each small and big. So on every page we had something that was small, something that was big, something that was small, something that was big. And of course we labeled it in Braille, even though he was still working on pre-Braille skills like in Braille, yeah. But it was a great way to introduce it by having Braille in all of his books. Another goal is I recently, for Christmas, made him a superman book. He was a superman for Halloween. I wanted him, I just got to thinking that he doesn't necessarily know about all of the fun characters that his classmates and brother would know about like Spider-Man and Superman, all of those, Batman. And so I started with a Superman book and I told the whole story about Superman. That's an example of just one of the graphics I did so he could feel the S shape that's on Superman's chest and readers. This would be another way to show tactile graphics as well. Those classrooms I showed you kind of at the beginning. Here they are adapted, modified. The one up the left hand was a bedtime book. And so it shows it on the lower there of my toothbrush and I glued a picture of a real, excuse me, a picture. In fact, to represent the picture of a toothbrush there, the next page was I washed my face. So I glued a piece of washcloth on there. The next page was something I think about pajamas. I put my jeans and so I cut up a little piece of his maze and glued them in there. So that's just a way, easy way to make people feel comfortable with him. The right was about the rainforest. Sometimes you're going to get books that maybe aren't necessarily, I didn't think it was the most appropriate book for him, but he was part of the reading group. So he gets a lot of balance and instruction. So there's a lot of one-on-one time with reading with books that are more tailor-made for him. But because I wanted inclusion and I want him to participate in the things that are happening with his clients, they were talking about the rainforest. So he got a rainforest book, which is great for talking about that. And we had a little about, so with the birds I made sure to include a feather. I found a butterfly. I found a toy frog. And then I made like a little rainforest box. So every time they talked about an animal, he would be able to put the animal inside of the rainforest as well, just to make it more active, fun and motivating for him. This client needs to get these beautiful illustrations and he gets the equipment of that in a way that's accessible to him. Some other examples of ones I made of the Hungry Caterpillar, a book of Australian animals. Those animals were removable and could be put in another paper. I wasn't sure about that, but it was like a graph, kind of a thing. He'd able to put those. So it made it an active and fun again for him. Some other examples I made of Easter, an Easter book, a mommy book. I was going away on vacation, so I made him a mommy book. So just something interesting and motivating again. I'm supporting this love for reading for our early readers. Here are some examples of adapting science books and nonfiction readers. I made a bird book and so I wanted to do, this is when I started second grade. I started looking at some of the things I knew this classmate would be learning about in science and I wanted to make sure he had books ahead of time. We put him in his library at school, actually. I wanted him to have library books he could check out. That would be matching what they're learning in school. So I did some life cycles, life cycles of birds. I had eggs. What did they eat? Seeds and worms. So I glued some. Found some wood stick feeling worms in the tackle section at the store, the feeding area, and glued bird seeds, those kind of things. So real life, you can, or feel as close to it as you can. A life cycle book of a tadpole. I have some great little molds of those. The life cycles of tadpoles. There's one for bees I think that I made and one for a sea turtle. This one is just for fun. A word dictionary I made. A lot of classrooms that my son has had have these word walls on the wall. And they're up high where if you're sitting on a desk, you can see a print. But if you're a bird reader, that's not accessible to you at all. And so I made this word book, which is like a dictionary, but also the purpose of it was to bring the word wall accessible back down for him. So as he was learning words, he could put them in his dictionary, stick them on there. Old book. And add words that are important to him, and that were really motivating. And it was a great way to review words that have been learned. All of these books we talked about can support IEP goals, or special education goals you have for your child. So you have the books that are specifically tailored for the learning that you have for your children. This is what I did here. We just got done with a meeting at school. And some of these goals, again, were some good language, so working on some adjectives and describing words. And I had just got a new car at the time. So we made a book about the new car and describing the tires on the inside, what it feels like, the windows. All of these things, something that's motivating to him, it supports the goals as well. The picture of him in the fridge. He's working on categorizing things like what belongs in a fridge? What belongs in a living room? What belongs in a classroom? Those kind of things. So we made books about that as well to support those goals at school. We also made books about creating accessible literature for our children. It takes a lot of time. It can take a lot of time. Some of them can be quicker, but some of them, they take a lot of time and planning. So what I've done to help with this is I usually, before school sets, usually, I'll have a book name party. And a lot of times, the schools have helped pass the part as well. But I usually have them at my home. And I hand out books and books that I want, because I kind of make the standards for the school year ahead of time. What kind of books are kind of goals that I anticipate him having? What are the standards? And then I create these lists of books ahead of time. And then I pass, and then I assign or they get to pick my friends that come over. I have great friends. And then they come over and they pick which book they want to make. They make the book. If they know how to braille, some of them have taken braille classes. They know how to braille, though, braille for me. If they don't, they just write and print. And then my fellow Williams V.I. will braille them after the party's over sometime when we have time. So we're able to make at least 20 books in one night, usually. And so we've done that for a few years for school. I've done it for, I wanted Christmas books one time, so we trinked out a bunch of real Christmas books. It's a great way to just get friends and family involved. And I also shout out to his team as well, usually most of the members of his school team come to my home as well and help make books. And these are used usually, because some of the books he gets like school books, but we usually use these to put in his school library at school. So he has books that he can check out from the library like his peers do, books that he's interested in. So what I've used is I try to get 30 pages to subtractile pictures, so chipboard, pages of books, Michael's Hobby Lobby, I don't know if you all have those there, but also Amazon, if you look up chipboard, books or binders or what do they call them? You'll have a whole bunch of unique ones that are reasonably priced on Amazon.com as well. Stock pages work. It's not really destructive with books, those will work. Liam, when he was younger, we had to get the really heavy duty stuff, but now he's a lot careful with books as he's gotten older so we can use a little bit thinner pages with him. Folders, and you can place them in a binder. That's another way you can make a book. You can release children's board books. So that would be a more inexpensive way. Big ideas for kids who are deafblind, just a couple that I've done. Storytelling, it's really with building, it's really focusing on the storytelling process with him, doing stories, learning about how stories go together, about fiction that it's not... That's a really hard one for him to get at first was that this is a story about a long time ago. It's not happening now. So that's something you can practice. I'm tactile signing with him there. The picture on the right is... I'm signing with my son Liam. I've got these homework tools. They're here, so I can work on homework across from him in good form for tactile signing and not have to pull him across to talk to me. But I can easily reach his work, sign with him at the same time. So it's not me providing access to the board well, but I'm providing access to the ASL as well. So good, proper form. So basically just a review, and then hopefully I'll have just a couple minutes if you guys have... I wanted to save a few minutes if you have any questions for our comments. I can hear from you, but we have talked about the importance of creating an accessible environment for our children. It's important for them to feel... I think that they feel like they belong, that it's worth it that we create this for them. But it's also setting the stage for them to be all readers and to see that the rail has power and it's meaningful in their world that it's important. And then we also talked a lot about experience books, how those can be a great way, a motivator, and to encourage and support a lot for literacy because the books are about something they know about, they care about, they enjoy, they've experienced, they're the experts in it, so that it's setting them up to be successful. The story boxes and conversation boxes contain items that can go with a story, making the pictures come alive. And the benefits, especially with story boxes, is it aids in the comprehension of the story, retain the story, it's motivating, it's fun. Their peers get to see beautiful pictures and story boxes we can have experience in a way that's tangible. And then the tactile graphics we talked about, making pictures, I've also thought that Liam, if classmates are seeing and enjoying these pictures and if they're using them to help them as early readers, if they're using the pictures to help them understand what they're reading, Liam should have that same opportunity in a way that makes sense for him and that's accessible to him. So I think that's important. And then choose tactile graphics that make sense, that tell the story and that I try to pick the ones that I know would be really motivating for him. I just wanted to share the Past for Literacy website. That's my link to all of mine. I have a couple pages just of books, strategies and stories and things that I have tried adapting. It was kind of fun to see. I started four years ago, so when Liam was three and so it's very early pre-brail skills and then all the way up till now when he's seven and he's actually reading, writing quite well, so you get to see a range of different ideas and strategies as well that you can hopefully use. And so I think, do we have a few minutes just to, if anybody has any questions or anything they'd like to share? At this time, we had one question that came in on the chat that is asking, do you use the Oakmont books? Some books. I can't say that I have. I don't know what they are. I'm sorry. Okay. The Oakmont books were made by a group of individuals in the United States that made them for a number of years, but they were very similar to their conduct development books and they would send them out to us for free. Oh, that's wonderful. But I don't think they've been around for just being 20 years. Okay. Yeah, that sounds wonderful. No, I have not heard of them. You can just open your microphone or throw up your hand. We have creating the tactile books and then having them available in the school library for Liam to be able to act as there. Yeah, I was always a little frustrated with the library because we couldn't get books, but I mean, he probably would be happy by the time they didn't have any pictures in them. They weren't that motivating for him and it wasn't fun. So it was nice to have our school so awesome. They literally cleared a whole shelf off for him. Actually, I think he has two now and he just has boxes and boxes and boxes of books. He can go look at it when it's library time. So he can be included that way. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. So there are a couple of hands up. Why don't you go ahead? Who put their hand up first? Now I'm just going to talk about it. So Karina, I'm going to unmute your mic. You're unmuted if you want to ask a question. Thank you. You mentioned about adapting some of the signs that you have to add them to the playground. You mentioned using some sturdy Braille labels. Do you know where you got those from? I don't understand the first part, but you're wondering where I get the Braille label from? Yeah, the sturdy ones, not just the Braille ones. But also the labeling. Oh, that's right. I'm going to tell you his name right off. I just found online and looked up pretty Braille outdoor labels and there's a whole bunch of different companies that came. And I went and emailed the first website that I could find. And they were probably about $5.99 each. But the gym men, when I told them what I was wanting them for, sent me all of them for free of charge, which was really nice. Oh, kidding. Yeah, sorry. I don't know the name off the top of my head, but if you just look it up, there was quite a few that popped up. I wish all of our parents were like you and were so eager to help. And I know you did it for your son, but that certainly helps the rest of us as educators if we had parents like you helping the team. And I also wanted to say that with regards to the Oakmont books, they still do make them. I haven't purchased any for, or haven't received any for a couple of years, but certainly within the last 15, I would say within the last five, I'm still able to access those. Really have to check that out. Yeah. I think they're actually made by people at Convix that are in the prison actually. Yeah, I know we have a prisoner that brails Leo's textbooks at school as well. Oh, that's cool. Yes. Thank you for that. Thank you, Aurelian. Lots of amazing ideas. I love how you incorporated members of the community. Thank you for the presentation. A lot of positive feedback from participants and we'd really like to thank you for so many suggestions and wonderful ideas so that we can build up literacy skills in our young children too. Just a little bit of that love of reading that we so want them to have by the time they are school. So thank you very much. Yeah. And from you on path of literacy, which is where I first encountered our information. So thank you so much, Bandy. Yeah. Thank you for this opportunity. Perfect. Thank you so much. Just a reminder that it takes us a little while to convert the video, but this video will be available. I'm going to guess that people are going to want to go back to it because there was so much good information and we'll have that posted probably within a week or so. And then it's on the RLC site, so if you're not sure where to get that, just let us know. And again, really appreciate the power point that's already gone out, right? And then the power point out, some were returned because there was, I think it'll get posted within the year. So guys, just so you know, if you haven't got the power point, it will stop getting posted as supplemental material with the video when we post it. So it's a real path to it. So thanks everybody. I'm going to give you a few seconds in case anybody has any last comments and then I'm going to get it all shut down. Thank you so much. Thank you.