National Braille Press is pleased to introduce Measuring Penny, the 6th book in our innovative “Great Expectations” children’s book program. The primary mission of this program is to bring picture books to life for blind kids through song, tactile play, engaged listening, word play, body movement, and picture descriptions. We do this by creating 9 accessible, fun, and free online activities to go with each book in the program. These free activities can be used at home or in the classroom to further explore the themes found in the book.

In Measuring Penny, the main character Lisa is given a fun but challenging homework assignment—to measure something using both standard and nonstandard units. She decides to measure her dog, Penny, using everything from traditional wooden rulers and yard sticks to the decidedly nontraditional paper clips and cotton swabs! She learns a lot about herself, her dog, the art of measurement, and the things that you can’t put a number on, like love.

Enjoy the book and check out the free online resources we have created to go with it. Each online activity has a downloadable BRF file and a downloadable, accessible PDF file so you can take the activities with you and share them with others. And best of all, the activities were created especially with blind kids in mind. Here are the activities for Measuring Penny.

Make Doggie Biscuits

Make delicious treats for your dog using this fun recipe from Stir It Up! Recipes and Techniques for Young Blind Cooks.

Accessible Measuring Tools

Learn about all sorts of accessible tools made especially for budding blind scientists, and then make your own balance scale using items from around the house.

Same Versus Different

Use comparison to evaluate how things are the same and how they are different.

Tips from a Blind Scientist

Meet Henry “Hoby” Wedler, a Ph.D. computational organic chemist, and make your own ice cream using an experiment from Out-of-Sight Science Experiments.

Tactile Graphs

Have fun surveying your friends and family, and then turn your data into a tactile bar graph or tactile pie chart.

Animal Friends

Collect data on how much work it takes to care for different types of pets. Also learn about how pet dogs and guide dogs are different.

Jokes About Math

These are some real zingers to share with family and friends. Who would have thought math could be so funny?

Songs About Measurement

Sing some great songs about different units of measurement.

Picture Descriptions

Enjoy detailed descriptions of the illustrations in the book, all created especially for you!

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