Sandletters & Sand tray

As a break from actual writing but still following the movements we worked with the sand paper letters & sandtray. The girls trace a sound, we talk about it, we go over the sounds & I usually use the chalkboard to write them all out in the association method for review.  We use both the print & cursive letters.  Maggie responds better to print.  Lily reads both but we work with cursive more with tracing, though again we do both. She reads them both just as well.  After writing out in between letters the girls draw on the tray for a beat before the next letter.

Maggie works on numbers & letters above.

Some printed cards we use with the association method.   Here I was working on oral recall skills at the table in between the above activity.  During spare moments I’ll ask Lily to read the sounds.  Or I’ll ask her to bring a certain one to see if she recognizes it auditorily.

I got very few pictures if any of Lily working with the sandletters or the sand tray.  This us because I use hand over have to help guide her fingers in the appropriate direction.  A good deal of the time Lily can find the correct motions, starting & stopping point to form letters.  Cursive is the easiest to grasp.  Other time she skips a curve or two points. So proper modeling is still required versus just verbal directions.  Today, while writing Lily drew independently the letter c by connecting a curve to two dots (you’ll see in a later post). This gave me ideas to further her handwriting skills.  Also by using the square paper by Handwriting without tears that Maggie has done well with.  Lily is independently drawing faces and her mat man character from HWT too.  And she is trying hard to paint independently pictures & proud of her results.