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).

To the beach!

Packed everyone into the car & went off to Kelanang beach today! This would be our 3rd or 4th visit this year. Traffic was good, weather was good - no haze, clear blue skies!

*will upload photos from hubby's handphone when time permits.

Benefits:

(1) Walking on sand gives him good tactile input & requires good balance.

(2) Walking in water gives resistance & challenges his balance even more (he'll happily splash around in ankle deep water, but if it's almost to his knees, he'll want to hold our hand)

(3) Talk about/show him the surroundings e.g. how the mangrove trees were different in terms of their roots, compared to normal trees. Showed him what animals live in a mangrove habitat e.g. crabs, mudskippers, fishes (cognitive, biology lesson)

(5) Catching crabs requires fine motor skills, hand eye co-ordination, faster reflexes. He caught a lot of crabs with his bare hands (with his fingers actually) during the previous visit. This time round, there were much fewer crabs & he wasnt interested. Instead, he was stomping on the crabs! Not to worry, he didnt kill them. They are much faster in burrowing themselves than he was in stomping them. Stomping with one foot requires good balance.

(6) Picking sea shells requires fine motor, hand eye, squat to stand, bending down. Later at home, you can use the shells in various ways: counting, visual discrimination, biology lesson, decoration during sandplay.

(7) Receptive language (speech input) - you can expand his vocabulary e.g. waves, tide coming in, estuary, hermit crab

(8) Expressive language (speech output) - he has the chance to use what he's learnt e.g. he surprised me by describing the clouds as "fluffy clouds", a term that I used only once, several months ago during a trip to the neighbourhood park.

(9) Bringing back sand for sandplay at home! There are areas on that beach where the sand is very fine & white.

(10) Sandplay at the beach itself of course! E.g. build sand castles, scoop & pour activities etc.

(11) Catching fish using a net requires very fast reflexes, balance, gross motor. We forgot to bring a net, so it was papa who caught fish using his bare hands. Papa the hero caught 3! We tried to help but fish escaped instead! : )

(12) Flying a kite requires gross motor skills, balance, visual tracking. We didnt bring the kite cos we knew we wouldn't have time to fly it cos we left much later than normal.

(13) Drawing/writing in the sand - doesnt require a mature tripod grip, so it's good to do this to let his creativity flow, without being hindered by his disability. Also good as a fun alternative to writing with the usual pen, pencil, colour pencil, marker, crayon, chalk etc on paper, whiteboard, blackboard. Fine motor skill still needed.

(14) A lesson in caring for the environment. Unfortunately, there was trash washed up on certain parts of the estuary (apart from the usual plastic, I came across a bottle, hard hat & tyre!). Use this opportunity to teach him that things should be disposed in their proper place or else it gets washed up on the beach etc & dirties the homes of the crabs, fish etc.

Note:
(1) We have to check to make sure the moon cycle isn't at the full moon stage cos the waves comes right up & there's no beach left. He's fearful if the waves are close to him.
(2) Bring insect repellant or at least wear long pants that can be rolled up. I was badly bitten.
(3) There's decent hawker fare at the purpose built "food court" but lots of flies
(4) There's a children's play area with the usual slides, climbing equipment etc.
(5) There's proper toilet but its yucky (very wet, smelly, no soap, sandy/muddy floor - some mums were rinsing their kids in the toilet). Bring your own hand sanitiser & toilet paper.