French Club: Learning to Read Braille Letters and Numbers - 6 Activities Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

French Club:  Learning to Read Braille Letters and Numbers – 6 Activities Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Military Background of Braille:

The Braille international alphabet and its ancestor of night-writing for military use were both invented by the French.

Captain Charles Barbier de la Serre (1767 – 1847) developed night-writing to communicate field orders at night to avoid revealing field positions with lanterns for reading.  As a member of Napoleon’s (1789 – 1821) army, Barbier had also seen soldiers killed for using lanterns at night for general reading as well.

The night-writing system he developed used 12 embossed dots that a single touch could not read at once according to the American Council for the Blind’s history website page.

Development of Braille for the Blind:

Louis Braille (1809 - 1852), a student at the National Institute for the Blind in Paris (France), further developed Barbier’s alphabet, which was later popularized by the French as an international alphabet for the visually impaired. 

The Braille alphabet is still in use today for the visually impaired.

Louis Braille’s alphabet used a 6-dot, embossed system that allowed a single finger touch to encompass a letter.  The blind read left-to-right in rows as sighted people at speeds that the American Council for the Blind records up to 125 words per minute.

Activities

The following activities have short instructions, but are long to master.

Activity 1 – Read about Famous Blind People

In Greek drama, the blind seer Tiresias makes appearances in Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex) and Antigone.

Helen Adams Keller (1880 – 1968) – author and first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts

Stevie Wonder (1950 - ) – singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer

Mario Bocelli (1958 - ) – singer, songwriter, and producer

Activity 2 – Letter and Number Shape Recognition – Day – English and/or French pronunciation

You need a Braille Alphabet and Numbers Panel to do this activity.  (These cost $15.99 on Amazon as of January 12, 2019.)

Place the index finger of your right hand on top of the letter “A.”  Note how it feels on the left of your finger and then the right.

Glide you index finger left to right over the character to memorize how it feels.

Note memorization cues in a notebook.

Do this for the letter “B” as well.

Not memorization cues in a notebook.

Activity 3 – Noting Differences - Day

In particular, note differences between the letters “A” and “B” in your notebook.

Then, do the letters “B” and “C” the same way until you go through the entire alphabet.

Do this until you have the alphabet memorized in daylight.

Activity 4 – Letter and Number Recognition – Night

Start somewhere in the middle of the board and try and identify a letter at night.

Take a guess.

If you are mistaken, use a flashlight and note the similarities and differences between the letters you guess wrong and the actual letter in your notebook. 

Start with the second row of letters and see if you can identify a letter. 

Go through all 26 letters and ten numbers until you can name all 26 letters and 10 numbers at night.

Going left-to-right should help with memorization, because that is how reading is set up.

Activity 5 – Easy Practical Braille Reading

There are some elementary exercises to “read” braile once you know letters and numbers to practice it.  More advanced reading should be taught by certified teachers.:

-read braille characters in elevators

-read braille character next to hotel doors

-use playing cards with braille

Activity 6 – Think of Ways to Use Braille for Fun and Life Skills

The American Council for the Blind lists some areas on their website where the visually impaired would like to have products developed that do not exist yet such as “braille” translations for:

-board games

-cookbooks

-restaurant menus

These activities might encourage students who master basic letter and number recognition to become braille teachers or special education teachers.

The following books has games to help learn Braille as well:

Guidelines and Games for Teaching Efficient Braille Reading by Myrna R. Olson in collaboration with Sally S. Mangold Ph.D by AFBPress (American Federation for the Blind Press - ISBN 978-0-89128-105-4)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Spanish: Cookbook Photography Review by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Spanish: Cookbook Photography Review by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The cookbook Cookbook: Over 150 Mouthwatering Step-by-Step Recipes by Pepita Arias uses 1 to 3 photos per page of most important steps in recipes to help ensure tasty results with the Spanish dishes she describes.

This book is 255 pages long and packs a ton of information into its pages.  Arias divides the recipes into 8 handy chapters and gives historical information on Spanish cuisine as well as a product education guide.

The 8 recipe chapters are divided this way:

1-tapas

2-eggs and soups

3-salad and vegetables

4-rice and pasta

5-fish and shellfish

6-pultry and game birds

7-meat and furred animals

8-desserts and baking

Arias provides product information on 20 broad categories ranging from barnyard animal products to cheese and sausage to wild game.

There is also a large section on kitchen equipment and dinnerware.

18 pages of the large-size cookbook are devoted to various influences on Spanish cuisine:

1-Moorish-North African Muslim

2-Catholicism-foods for fasts and feasts

3-Sephardim-Spanish Jewish

4-American notably in the form of produce such as peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes

5-Ancient Rome as Spain was one of the largest regions of the Roman Empire

The 4-page spread on Catholic Feast Days and Fiestas can help travelers plan their trips.

Spanish by Arias is a fun introduction to Spanish cuisine whether you plan to cook the food and/or sample it in a restaurant.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Delicioso: The Regional Cooking of Spain: A Review Focused on Product Education by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Delicioso: The Regional Cooking of Spain: A Review Focused on Product Education by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The book Delicioso: The Regional Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas offers readers well-organized insight into the broad 7 regional cuisines of Spain, tapas (appetizers) as a national food trend, and product buying tips displayed as inserts within chapters.

The product information inserts I found most beneficial include the following 7 tips:

1-olive oil production and buying tips for the various grades of olive oil

2-how to buy high-quality paella rice and pans

3-how to buy high-quality real saffron

4-how to buy high-quality Manchego cheese

5-how to cook with Spanish earthenware dishes

6-how to use and maintain a mortar and pestle

7-how to buy and prepare salt cod

The book has large-print and is 460 pages long.

The eight chapters Casas lists with their most distinguishing culinary feature follow:

1-Spain as an entire country – tapas (appetizers)

2-North Central Spain – sauces

3-Northeastern Interior Spain – peppers

4-Catalunya – casseroles

5-Central Plains Spain – roasts

6-Southeastern Coastal Spain – rice

7-Andalusia – fried foods and gazpacho

8-Canary Islands – mojos (uncooked dipping sauces using products from Africa and Spain)

The regional foods chapters contain more than 350 recipes.

There are 19 regional photos, an index, and introductions to each chapter that describe the region’s food from entrées to dessert.

Delicioso: The Regional Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas details the interplay of geography and history to produce unique foods in Spain’s different regions even when using the same agricultural products sometimes.

I like this book for those reasons alone.  I would love it if cooks from the Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries would use its organizational model to write about regional foods in their homelands to expand upon the work of Penelope Casas.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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The Foods and Wines of Spain - A Review Focused on Food Self-Sufficiency - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Foods and Wines of Spain – A Review Focused on Food Self-Sufficiency – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Ruth Paget’s Mediterranean Diet – Spanish Style

I am not selling this diet, but this is what I have developed for myself as a nexus of budget and personal preference over 3 decades.

I look for recipes that fit the following pattern when I look through Spanish cookbooks:

-Monday through Thursday:

I eat protein combinations from 3 to 4 appetizer dishes and at least one pantry meal made from rice, beans, or pasta.  I snack on homemade popcorn with sea salt.

-Friday:

Baked fish plus baked, potato wedges with Italian seasoning are my favorite.

-Saturday

A chicken or pork dish

-Sunday

A seafood dish three times a month and beef once a month.

Sometimes the order is reversed on the weekends.

In Monterey (California) where I live now, I tend to eat chicken and seafood at Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean restaurants.

I like Spanish food, because the basic ingredients can grow in almost all 50 states during summer and in greenhouses during winter.  Hydroponic irrigation/agriculture systems in greenhouses might make this possible.

Reading Casas’ cookbook at a young age made me think that many American states could be self-sufficient in food and have a surplus to sell or store in the form of gazpacho.

Gazpacho is like V8 with the addition of garlic toast all blended and chilled.  You can store some brands at room temperature and refrigerate them after opening.

Purdue University or Cal Poly need to test if gazpacho is a complete protein.  Bread is made from wheat grains, but do seeds in tomatoes, cucumbers, and pepper constitute the “grain plus seed” formula to make a full protein?  Fact check needed for a delicious and nutritious cold soup drink or salad in a bottle.

Using my region as an example, South Monterey County is also ranching country for beef, the coasts can provide fish and seafood, Idaho is close for chickens, and lamb for Easter can be shipped in from New Mexico or New Zealand.

Monterey County might even be able to make a surplus for storage or sales to other places of some items.

We already have crops growing in our county like lettuce that is the size of Vermont and New Hampshire put together.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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