Homemade insets

I finally got round to making insets. Had been planning to do so for some months now. Well, there are many things on my To Do list in terms of Montessori activities and never enough time or energy!

Bought a few pieces of different coloured plastic corrugated boards from Tesco this morning. Measured, drew, and cut (use a good craft blade/cutter). As simple as that! I've 2 more shapes drawn out but haven't got round to cutting them.

Actually I bought a cobalt blue board to be teamed up with the pink one in the picture, for it to resemble the typical Montessori inset. But I thought maybe this (pink on pink, instead of pink on blue) is good enough?

Oh, to get him interested in drawing lines, I told him he was decorating a bauble and an easter egg. Luckily he bought the story.

It's the first time he's introduced to this activity and due to his fine motor impairment, I held his hand to draw the horizontal lines with orange and red colour pencils. He tried it for himself with the blue pencil in the oval shape. The black lines in the circle look vertical but was drawn horizontal (I had turned the paper sideways). Towards the right half of the circle, he took over and became scribbly lines (he was a bit "geram" by then).

I found this set of colour pencils that come together with their individual soft grip. It's on offer at Tesco for RM5. Pretty good price compared to Faber Castell's normal pencils that are packaged with 2 grips. I think these colour pencils with a soft grip might be more suitable for my son compared to a standard sized pencil (too thin?), and compared to the jumbo sized/triangular shaped ones (a bit hard?). He used this set to draw the lines during the inset activity. The quality of the lead isnt good (hence cheap) so he has to press harder for the colour to be visible. Perhaps that's not so bad as it might get him to build up his muscle strength! The grips are removeable, so can be transferred to other pencils.