LEGO® Braille Bricks - get preparation tips and tricks

Ideas to sort the bricks

Finding the right brick from the box can take some time and might not be a useful part of the learning activity. 

Use a sorting system and preparation to avoid wasting valuable teaching time. Some children may also need guidance to separate the bricks and distinguish them from each other. 

• Make alphabetic towers of bricks on one base plate and use this as a quick access to alphabetically sorted bricks

• Invent a sorting system – e.g. use small bags, boxes, or make your own compartments out of cardboard

• Sort by color, series of 10 letters (A to J, K to T), vowels and consonants, etc.

• Make a transportable kit, e.g. using a binder. Glue a base plate on a perforated plastic sheet, put some bricks in a perforated pencil pouch and put them in a binder

• Prepare activities by pre-selecting relevant bricks in a small bowl, box, tray or the base plate. 

Ideas to prepare the base plate

• Use storage plates by preparing bricks already in the right position for a given activity on additional base plates 

• Prepare layout of the base plates by compartmentalizing tactile spaces e.g. with tape or 1x1 flat tiles – or use classic bricks to make separations, walls, boxes, etc.

• Use other LEGO base plate sizes, i.e. 4x6, 4x8, 4x12 size plates

• Use a brick as a tactile mark, e.g. in a top corner of the base plate 

• Numbers can be used in the activities without number signs to avoid too long equations and too many physical manipulations. Alternatively, put a number sign in the top left of the base plate to indicate number activities

• Consider using a large base plate to activate a pair or group  collectively, i.e. centrally placed with one side for each child