People who helped others

Ages 3 to 5 Read and do together · about 15 minutes

Read together

Florence Nightingale was a nurse. She kept hospitals clean.

Louis Braille was a boy who could not see. He made a way for blind people to read.

Do it

1. Tell each story simply. Florence cared for sick soldiers about 170 years ago and showed that clean hospitals saved lives. Louis lost his sight as a child and, when he was a teenager, he made a code of raised dots.
2. Feel a few raised dots with a fingertip. Make your own dots with a pencil point on thick paper.
3. Ask: who helps you? Draw a picture of a helper.
4. Think of one way you can help someone this week.

Talk about it

• How did Florence and Louis help?
• How can you help?

For the grown-up

Florence Nightingale (1820 to 1910) nursed soldiers in the Crimean War in the 1850s and later helped change how hospitals were run. Louis Braille (1809 to 1852) lost his sight in an accident as a young child and, by about the age of fifteen, had developed the system of raised dots now called braille. Choose other helpers from your own culture and church, too.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• Lynn McDonald, Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001)
• Jean Roblin, The Reading Fingers: Life of Louis Braille (American Foundation for the Blind, 1955)
• Library of Congress, National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, information on Louis Braille and braille

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.