St. Andrew’s Home School

I bought some little plastic letter tiles last august for use with the our preschooler to play with during “school time”. I had not planned on really pushing time with them, just letting him have fun and something to occupy his little hands while I was working with another child or two.

He has thoroughly loved these letters. So has Bairno. CowBoy knows his alphabet. He can say the alphabet, knows the sounds each letter makes, and can identify each one by sight. CowBoy turned four in April. While I have not directly worked with him on the letters and their sounds, anytime he showed me one or asked me about it I answered with the letter name or sound. He can write his first name, but struggles a bit with the writing aspects. He did just turn four after all.

Bairno, on the other hand, loves the sound the plastic letters make when he shakes the plastic jug in which they reside. He is just 17 months old after all. But he loves to open books and point to the words and say, “a, a, a”. Then shake his head very emphatically and definitively with satisfaction at his own reading skill. It is rather adorable I must say.

CowBoy will ask how to spell something and then as we sound it out he picks out the letters and lines them up on the table to spell the word. He will ask if the word is “proper and needs a capital letter”. He gets a bit upset with the fact that the letters slide around easily and do not stay straight. So I concocted a brilliant plan to fix that problem.

I bought some magnet tape and a white magnetic board and gathered my scissors for the work at hand.

I sat diligently (with the help of a friend) and we stuck little squares of magnet tape on the backs of the plastic letters so they would stick to the magnetic white board and would not slide around.

Bairno is pleased that they still rattle and make a loud noise in their storage jug.

The third really great thing about these letter tiles is the wonderful use they will prove to be for our Princerella. She is a bright girl, but her biggest hardships right now are her struggle with writing, she can’t hold a pencil well (her hand strength is a battle) and the fact that most people treat her younger than she is and try to hold her back or group her with younger children; this drives us both batty.

Princerella is left-handed. I am right-handed. This coupled with the fact that she needs guided handwriting assistance still at most times makes it hard for me to help at the level of help she deserves. Enter Papa who is also left-handed. He gets to help with most of the fine motor skill assistance she needs. This works out really well, but during the day when he is at work she still needs to work on spelling and phonics and such with me.

See, she can spell well. As she is in public school this year for the PT/OT benefits she is bringing home weekly grades in the 90 - 100 range in spelling. Her math fluctuates greatly depending on the concept, but that’s another post for another day. As long as she is allowed to continue working on spelling and reading in a way that allows her to succeed I am happy. Spelling/Reading and Handwriting are two different things all together.

So you see, these letter tiles and the magnetic board are perfect for her too.

I hope that this has given some of you a great starting point for your preschooler or special ed student. If you have any more ideas to help us along our journey, please share them here. I can use all the Special Ed advice I can get.