I highly recommend (because I purchased them myself and used them for quite a while) that you buy these two sets of wood-like Braille learning blocks from Amazon and combine them into a single set: 1) " Plan Toys <strong>Braille</strong> Alphabet A-Z "; and 2) " Plan Toys <strong>Braille</strong> Numbers 1 - 10 ".
These are excellent. I think they are the best, especially after having purhcased some other brands and found them to be too small or too flimsy.
In addition to everything the other poster said, the way I type Braille is by using a keyboard layout I made using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (mostly corresponding to the qwerty layout, but also using shift and altgr to fit all the other Braille cells in somewhere).
I would really (really) recommend this app for Android, idk if there is an ios version; I learned Braille with it, I just opened it on my way home and complete the dots. Now it has dictionary, practice, translate etc. It's super useful and easy. It has contractions too! Good luck.