Essential Experiences to Undergird the Early Development of Literacy, by Alan J. Koenig and Carol Farrenkopf, published in the January-February 1997 issue of Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, Volume 91, Number 1, pp. 14-24. The Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB) allows professionals to be lifelong learners. For as a teacher of students with visual impairments, JVIB is the main artery through which I learn about evidence-based practices. With the JVIB archive, it is possible to reread remarkably interesting articles that consist of timeless information that is still capable of affecting professionals years after the original publication. The article, Essential Experiences to Undergird the Early Development of Literacy, by Alan J. Koenig and Carol Farrenkopf, served as an instructional springboard in my practice and influenced how I delivered hands-on, experience-based learning. It has been over 10 years, but I still remember the moment vividly: I asked a then 9-year-old boy with congenital blindness about the color of a banana that was peeled and ready to eat. He sat for a moment, then answered, You know, I don't know. On other occasions, I found it necessary to describe in great detail to him the unique relationship between a cat and a dog or a bird and a cat. These conversations and many others typically interrupted standard, scripted reading lessons taken from a common braille curricula, but each were springboards to many teachable moments. These scenarios occurred often while I was teaching braille reading to Kindergarten through high school students at a residential school for blind students, and I was frequently reminded that incidental knowledge that is taken in visually by sighted people must be strategically taught to students who are visually impaired (that is, those who are blind or have low vision). Not long after the above-mentioned I was offered the inspiring opportunity to lead a self-contained class for visually impaired preschoolers. Feeling the weight of the responsibility to guide the concept development of the children, I turned to a trusted and respected colleague for assistance. In her wisdom, she referred me to read the article I chose to highlight in this essay. The article mattered to me, because it helped to empower me with examples of what to expose the children to, which then prompted me with ideas of how to involve the children in as many experiences as possible in order to facilitate future reading successes. Specifically, I referred to Table 4, Supporting experiences and specific words or concepts collapsed across grades, by experience, within the article and selected different global experiences, which are typically learned through activities of daily living. I then assigned one experience to each month of preschool. Once an experience was designated for a given month, I then selected vocabulary, textures, letters, nursery rhymes, books, and class field trips centered on the theme. …