Resources for Parents and Families

Here you'll find an ever-changing mix of games, activities and ideas from other families who have a Mountbatten. Come back regularly in case there's something new!

Because lots of families will visit, we encourage you to share the things your family does together with the Mountbatten - do you play games? write stories? make music? Maybe other families would like to try your activities, so please do let us know! Send an email to us at info@mountbattenbrailler.com and we'll be very glad to put your story up.

The Famous Shark Attack

Shark Attack is a wonderful game to play on any model of Mountbatten - great fun for all, and giving great practice in reading, writing and navigating.

This game is set out in the SET-BC Lessons guide; you can download the full guide here, or use the link to read it online. The instructions for Shark Attack are in Unit 3, Lesson E.

Here are the steps to play it:

1. The person who will be the shark should insert a new sheet of paper in the MB.
2. Another person should Braille the letter g about 12 times in various areas of the page, in front of the player or players. The person setting up the game sheet should explain that these are little fish swimming in the ocean.
3. If there is more than one player, there should be a sheet for each player - and they should all be the same!
4. The person who is preparing the game sheet should centre the embossing head on the page. Now the game is ready to begin.
5. Explain that the player is a very hungry great white shark and that they want fresh fish for supper. Explain that once they know how to move around and swim they can start eating the fish.
6. Have them navigate to 1 cell in front of the fish and use backspace+space to delete the g - to gobble up the fish.

There are other variations of the same game:

• ♦ The Star Catcher Game - players have to catch as many stars as possible (Braille the letter 's' s for star).
• ♦ The Hungry Wolf Game - the hungry wolf wants to eat some tasty sheep (the fat wooly sheep are represented by a 'full cell', all six dots.
• ♦ Vary the number of sheep, fish or stars to increase or decrease the difficulty.
• ♦ For multiple players, set an auditory timer for 2 minutes and then count the consumed stars, fish or sheep; the person who gets the most in the time is the winner.

Reminder: so that the players can successfully delete the fish, sheep or stars, don't eject the paper or lift the paper lever after you have created the playsheet, otherwise the embossing head won't line up correctly.

When the game is done, have the player use the automatic page eject feature to remove their Braille page: Eject page is newline+enter.