Sandpaper alphabets

I finally completed the sandpaper alphabets 2 Fridays ago. Was cutting up the letters until my skin nearly peeled off my thumb! Learning point - use a good strong pair of scissors & pace yourself. Anyway, I was rushing to have it completed because it had been a busy week, the week of 20 July (Actually, July was a busy month!) and I wanted it up before my whole day seminar at SEGi College the next day. I also noticed that he has taken an interest in using his finger to "write/trace" an alphabet (I had pasted A4 sheets of paper of the letter G & D on his cupboard). So Iwanted to "strike when the iron is hot"!

What's it for?
It's part of the process to teach him to write. With you holding his pointer & middle finger together, you move his fingers over the alphabets as though you were writing with his fingers. That way you are showing him the sequence of strokes. The sandpaper provides tacticle feedback & enhances the learning process. Pointer & middle finger are used because they are supposedly more sensitive than other fingers. But he has difficulty in keeping those 2 fingers closed together, so I just use his pointer.

The montessori method use this as part of teaching the child recognition of the alphabets. Since my son already knows his upper & lower case, I use it in teaching writing.

How do I make sandpaper letters?
The easiest is of course to buy them ready made. The cheapest is to borrow them. When I started off, I did not know where to buy them nor anyone I could borrow from. I recently heard that there's a shop in Summit that sells montessori material. Not sure if they've got sandpaper letters.

It's simple to make.

(1) I found a website that provides a template of lower & upper case letters that you can download for free. You can download the lower case letters from this place: http://www.montessorimaterials.org/Language/printlower.pdf

(2) Print & cut out the letters.

(3) Place them on the back of sandpaper & trace the outline. Remember to place the printed letters on the reverse side so that when you cut out the sandpaper, it appears the correct way around & not the mirror image version.

(4) Cut out the shapes.

(5) Paste them on cardboard. Give some thought to the colour of the sandpaper & cardboard. Since my sandpaper is beige, I chose black cardboard. It's good to have the contrast.

I also have another set where the sandpaper is black (waterproof type of sandpaper) and the cardboard is a light colour. That set has only a single alphabet on a smaller piece of cardboard. That's used when I sit with him and show him the strokes one alphabet at a time.

I decided to paste the beige letters onto a single piece of cardboard so that he can easily compare the various letters & get a big picture (& it doesnt take up as much space). I pasted up the cardboard in a place that is easily accessible for him & thankfully he does want to do the strokes by himself (with me watching if I'm around).