His "wipe clean book"

I'm trying to get him interested in using the pen again. He was drawing, scribbling, writing on a daily basis for a while then he stopped for quite a long time. Now that he'll soon start kindergarten, I'm keen on getting him to practice again (in a relaxed, fun manner).

These are photos of his "wipe clean" book, that he drew on this afternoon. I bought the book quite cheaply at the last MPH warehouse sale. There are no alphabets or numbers, but it does get him to practice in a non-academic manner.

Photos of his writing & drawing

This past week I've been pleasantly surprised with his writing. I've not been actively getting him to practice writing. My focus recently has been on building the foundations for reading. Also, I've been busy this week attending to other matters, so had very little time to spend with him.

These are the photos of his writing & drawing taken this week (aged 3yrs 9mths):

Look at his writing of number 2, bottom left of photo

I was really surprised with his writing of number 2. Of course, it's not perfect. I dont expect it to be given his disability. I'm just very glad that he's progressed, without me forcing him to do pages of writing.

He wrote it using the chunky Tesco marker pens. The sheet was laid on a hard surface, over a small plastic container about 20cm in height. He was seated on the floor.

This worksheet is available for free from www.learningpages.com. The sheets are graded by skills & are grouped by themes. The sheet in the photo has the aim of teaching to count & to write numbers 1 & 2.


I like his letter "S" on the right The photo above is of his writing on a big whiteboard, which was placed on the floor, leaning against a wall. He used whiteboard marker.

He wrote "W H H", then "OSO" and repeated "OSO" below it. OSO is the name of the cartoon character, Special Agent Oso, shown on Playhouse Disney. I was pleased that he could write "S". I read that curved letters are harder compared to straight letters like "E", "F"

Depiction of a face

His drawing seems to have evolved. The eyes are now circles instead of dots. The nose is a "V" instead of a dot. I think the ">" on the left of the face is either an arm/hands or an ear. He drew this today while I was out. I just noticed it & he's asleep now so I didnt have the chance to ask him what the ">" symbolised.

Pre-writing skills - 27 Aug 09

Over the past few weeks, I've taken photos of some of his work from his pre-writing (fine motor) skills activities.



The photo's a bit small & I dont have PhotoShop to make it easy to indicate what I want to highlight. On the left of the mat, there's an outline of his left hand. It was taken on 12 Aug 09. That was the second time he could trace the outline of his hand by himself. The 1st time was a few days prior to this, on the whiteboard. I was so happy! It's progress for him cos in the past I had to hold his right to show him how to trace the outline of the left hand.


I think the inventor of this Aqua Doodle is simply great! It's a fabric mat & comes with a marker child-sized pen. The pen doesnt contain ink. Instead, you uncap it & fill up with plain tap water. When the water from the pen touches the mat, the mat gets wet & that becomes your markings. The blue colour of the markings on the mat comes from the backing sheet of the mat which is blue. The white top sheet absorbs the water temporarily & when it dries off, the markings disappear. You can't erase it yourself. You just let the water dry.



You can leave him to scribble away without worrying about him getting ink on the floor, on the walls etc. It's just plain water, not ink. You can see why I think it's great! It's also a fun & pleasant change to paper & pen for writing skills practice. It has the alphabets on the border of the mat, which allows kids to learn to write by tracing over. I've seen it at Carefour & Jusco for just under RM50 (cheaper during sales at Jusco).



This photo was taken on 16 Aug 09. He was seated on the floor & I was holding the book. But when I took the photo, the book was on his lap. I didnt help him adjust his tripod grip/mature pencil grip lower towards the nib.

'Wipe clean' books are fun too. This version has thick chunky pages which will withstand a toddler's rough handling. It doesn't contain the typical pages of alphabet writing for practice. Instead, it's has pictures, supposedly for kids to learn to draw. Uhm, I'm not sure if that's a good way to teach kids drawing (especially after what I learnt at SEGi Appreciation Day workshops). When I bought the book, my purpose was for him to practice his pre writing skills in a fun way (ie. in a way that he doesnt even realise it's for writing practice).

From my recent weeks of "Project Clear Out", I realise I've collected various bits & bops of 'trash'. Amongst the things I rediscovered were old milk tin/tin container covers of different sizes & colours & material (plastic & metal). It's fun & cheap & it's "green" (reuse part of the reuse/reduce/recycle).

Since I recently read up about the use of insets in the Montessori syllabus, I showed him how to 'play' with the covers. Basically it's helping him trace the outline of the tin/plastic covers. It's similar in concept to tracing the outline of his left hand. To make this fun, I arranged the covers to resemble Mickey Mouse/the Playhouse Disney Channel logo. I then asked him to fill in with eyes, nose & mouth. At the end, to get in practice in writing letters, I had him trace over the word "MICKEY" at the bottom right of the page. Photo was taken on 22 Aug 09.

Notice how the outline in purple can be easily seen. That's cos I was helping him trace & I applied pressure on the colour pencil. When he drew the eyes, nose, mouth & traced over the name, it's barely visible. That's cos he has difficulty in controlling the amount of pressure he puts on the pencil. If he were to use a marker pen, it would be very easily seen, as illustrated below. It's a result of his CP.

A few months ago introduced letter writing sheets for practice. It was in preparation for school (nursery). I don't force him. I stopped doing it with him a while back, for reasons that I forgot (perhaps when he was sick). I brought out this sheet about 3-4 days ago. He wasnt interested in filling it up. So just left it lying around on his table. Today, (27 Aug 09) he willingly did it by himself under the supervision of my helper to make sure he got his strokes right. When he completed it (using a marker pen), he happily ran & showed me.



He needs to work on capital 'M' but I suspect the paper might have been too far away from him as this might explain the untidy writing on the first 2 rows & the decent looking M at the last row. I was very surprised with the neatness of his lower case 'm'. I think I was happier than he was!





This was taken on 25 Aug 09. It not only requires him to trace over the outline, but to follow the sequence of the alphabets. It's a variation of the common 'join the dots' using numbers. He gets to practice several skills at one go (hand eye co-ordination, tripod grip, visual, reinforce his alphabets).



These worksheets are available for free at http://www.learningpage.com/. Very useful site containing creatively designed sheets & ideas for activities with kids from preschool upwards. Each page states the skill set targetted (e.g. shape recognition, recognising numbers 1-5), level targetted (e.g. preschool, K1). It's also presented by themes (e.g. there are 50 odd pages for Preschool kids under the ocean kingdom theme).

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).