Making Braille Magnets for Beginning Readers

I wanted braille magnets to adorn the lower half of a preschooler's fridge at home and grandma's house. I had specific criteria: consistent braille spacing, words easy to track across when tiles lined up, and the magnets needed to be strong enough to stick when reading. 

Then as I started talking about curriculum with the next year's kindergarten teacher, I realized braille alphabet magnets were not just a way to provide incidental exposure to braille, they would be a tool in the classroom as the teacher taught letter recognition and phonics.

The kindergarten class will be using Fundations® to practice letters and phonemic awareness. Because Wilson Language makes Fundations and The Wilson Reading System, and APH carries a braille version of the Wilson Reading System, I was excited that I could get braille versions of the magnetic tiles they will use in the kindergarten class. I wanted my student to have time over the summer to play with braille alphabet tiles, so he would be ready to learn with them in kindergarten. Given the importance of mechanics when reading braille, I also wanted to add an adaptation so braille letters could be lined up easily by the student or an adult. Of course with print letters, the exact placement next to each other does not impact legibility the way that it does in braille. Focus on tracking skills must be integrated when using this tool.