My eldest has been using sandpaper letters for about a year now. I cannot recommend them enough. They taught her how to write the entire alphabet with accuracy in no time with little help from me. Today we focused on upper and lowercase letters at the same time. We practiced sorting them, putting them in order, tracing them, and writing them.
September is safety month and we've been talking about various safety things such as what to do if there were a fire, a suspicious person, or medical emergency in our home. I've described the difference between the fire, police, and ambulance departments. We've practiced pretend calls to 9-1-1 and have been memorizing phone numbers and our address. This weekend is Fall Safety Day with the local police and fire departments in which we will be attending to learn some more real-life scenarios of what to do in emergencies. We've also discussed road signs and left and right in order to identify public signs and what they mean. I have matching cards with words for further reinforcement.
We are also finishing up our pre-reading sets in order to begin with Montessori's pink reading series! Very excited to begin reading. Again, my eldest has been ready to begin reading for about 6 months or so now, but with moving and getting settled, this is the first time we've been able to sit down and methodically begin the phonics work. This activity above is identifying vowels. BTW, it has been very helpful to introduce the sounds of letters rather than the names of the letters in the alphabet from the start. It makes sense because when you begin reading words, you do it by sounding out the letters rather than stating their name. It saves an extra step of going back and re-teaching what could have been done from the beginning.
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