Every Day Life and a Surprise, Too.

Sarah Marion amazes me just about every day. This disease has taken a lot from her and from us as a family, but it has also given us an awful lot too. I guess you could call it the silver lining. I try to find that silver lining more and more because it is what sustains the Hope that lives within me. Hope that one day Sarah might be able to see again. Hope in knowing that if she does not ever see again she will still live an amazing life. Hope....

Although Sarah is studying braille and using an abacus for math she still has many subjects that she does that are written for the seeing learner. Because of this I spend a lot of time reading her textbooks to her and then finding ways in which to modify the assignment in order to make it more user friendly for her. One example of this is her science material. We just finished up a science book that dealt a lot with animals and Sarah decided to pick a human anatomy science textbook as her next book. This science textbook comes with a lot of cool material and projects, but a lot of that is with handouts where you label different things or parts of the body. About a month ago, Sarah was working on the parts of a cell and the ditto that came with the assignment would have been of no use to her as he could not see what the handout was asking her to label, so I decided to make a cell that Sarah could learn from. I gathered up different types of candy that could represent the different parts of a cell. I used a hot glue gun to glue the pieces that Sarah has placed inside her cell. I had her use a piece of yarn to create the outside (or membrane) of the cell so that she could feel where the cell boundaries were and place the candies accordingly. She then wrote in braille what each piece candy represented and then we connected a piece of yarn from the braille word to the place it was inside the cell. This way Sarah could read the word, follow the string to its counterpart inside the cell and she would know what represented what. The end result of her cell can be seen below.

This is just one example of many showing how Sarah learns and how I teach her. It is hard and there are days where I wish that I did not have to do the extra work, but Bob and I are trying to teach Sarah that she can do just about everything everyone else can she just needs to go about it differently. I need to make sure that I am modeling this behavior for her as a teacher with a good attitude so that she will (hopefully) pick up on that and apply it in her own life when she is struggling and wants give up because living life as a sighted person is so much easier than living life as a blind person.

This is Sarah beginning her project. She is feeling the outside of the construction paper so she knows where her boundaries are when placing her yarn.

This is the textbook that I read to her from. It is pretty cool.

Sarah making the labels for the different parts of her cell.

Sarah's cell.

On a side note - Sarah has been asking for a tandem bike for quite a while. She can still physically ride a regular bike but because she cannot see what cars are coming or going, or where bumps are in the road or sidewalk, or where the road turns it just isn't safe for Sarah to ride a bike right now. As surprise to her Bob and I ordered her a tandem bike which will allow Sarah to have the freedom to ride again and gives Bob and I some peace of mind that she will be safe when riding. She is constantly asking for one of us to take her for a ride and most of the time we are able to oblige her. The boys are really good sports about taking her around. She was super excited when the box arrived on our doorstep and even more excited when its contents were revealed to her. This is just another way in which we are trying to show Sarah that she can do everything everyone else can she just needs to go about getting the end result a bit differently.