Learning Pre-School Style

Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Colors...

Now that Tommy is getting a little older I'm starting to work on getting him up to speed for pre-school. I am not a teacher but I do love to read and learn myself. It's really exciting and rewarding to see how the work I do with Thomas is making a difference. I have been working on some ideas for increasing his knowledge of basic concepts and here's what I have so far.

Shapes - using the APH lightbox

Alphabet
I am trying to track down some Playskool magnetic letters because they have braille on them already. My idea is to have a letter of the day like on Sesame Street and then make a big deal about that letter all day. Then I could incorporate that letter into the food we taste and the things we do all day.

Numbers
I incorporate counting all day long. We count his fingers and toes while singing. I used to use my finger but now we use his "magic finger"or index finger to count. Any kind of finger isolation is a great activity that will help with braille skills. It is also helpful to talk about how Mommy and Daddy and everyone else has 10 fingers and toes too. It is important to explain the things that vision would tell him (i.e., that everyone has 10 fingers and toes.) Tom really enjoys his APH book Jellybean Jungle. It has raised "jellybeans" that you can touch on every page that are great for counting.

Shapes
As I am writing this, Tom is having vision therapy in the other room and they are working on shapes. They use a turtle with shapes on his back. When you push all the shapes down the turtle's head pops out of the shell. This is another opportunity to use finger isolation to trace the outline of each shape with Tom's index finger.

Directions
Up, Down, Left, Right. These concepts are essential learning for young blind children. As Thomas works with his vision therapist, who is also an O&M, they constantly review spatial concepts. This will be helpful when Tommy is in new environments and people describe to him that, "the door is on the left," or "the ketchup is in the center of the table."

To work on directions and shapes, Tom sits on the floor with two small metal mixing bowls; one his left and one on his right side. In between his legs are four blocks and four balls. They practice identifying the shape and then placing all the blocks on the left and all the balls on the right. This also illustrates the concepts in and out. Give this one a try! You probably have everything you need at home right now. Metal bowls are ideal because they give auditory feedback when the shape clangs against the bowl.

Sorting game using shapes and 2 metal bowls.

Interestingly, today I was a room away working on this blog post during Tom's therapy. His therapist said that Tom was his most responsive and attentive. When Tom knows I'm right there he gets distracted and wants to quit before the tasks are done. Sometimes it's good to take a step back.

Do you have any ideas? Share them in a comment! I would love to hear from you.