Learn to Write Letters for Preschoolers Using Sandpaper Letters

Vito is 36 months old.

Our sandpaper letter set has finally arrived (yehey before Christmas!) and it’s been a favorite ever since!  If you follow me on Instagram, I recently showed a picture of Vito working with Schleich animals and sandpaper letters.  But that’s just one activity we can do with the letters.  The main use of this material is for Vito to use it as a tool in learning how to write alphabet letters.

FEELING THE LETTERS

This is the part where the parent/teacher and child sensitise the letters.  Montessori suggests that you should use index and middle fingers to “trace” the letters.  In our case, it’s a hit and miss.  Vito would sometimes do it but most of the time he would just use his index finger (see first image).  See how he uses his hand to hold the board.

And as a side note, he tends to write using his left hand!  Yes, he traced the letter c with his right hand and used his left hand to write it in our rice tray.   At the moment, he keeps using both his hands in our activities, so I can’t confirm which hand is dominant.

WRITING ALPHABET LETTERS

For the writing tray, I reused our red rice for a little bit of "Christmassy" feel and I used the tray included in this Melissa and Dough Lacing Activity.  Of course, you can use any material like salt, sugar, or even cake sprinkles.  He loves seeing the outcome! He’s really really happy seeing that he can write the letters he traced from the sandpaper board to the rice tray.

So in what order should you start with the letters?  I’m following the order suggested from the book Montessori Letter Work.  We used this book to practice writing whenever we are in bed, that’s before midday nap.  The reason why you’re seeing the letter x here is because that’s the start of Vito’s full name.

Here he is with the letter a.  This is a difficult letter to write for toddlers or preschoolers.  Mavi had a hard time with this too, but that’s fine, just keep on practicing!

THE PLAY STAGE

This is an open-ended play.  You can try I Spy or letter matching activity like what we did for exploring letter sounds.  There’s so much you can do with the sandpaper letters!  The games are vital to help the child associate the letter sounds with real world objects or things.

Another material that he likes to work with when he wanted to practice writing letters is our Alphabet Playdough and Tracing Mats.  You can read more about how we use it in this post, Alphabet Letter Writing Practice for Preschoolers.  The mats are displayed in our shelf for easier access and in case he wanted an impromptu writing practice (there is no need to prepare a rice/salt tray).  If your student/s is/are more advance and is/are looking for more writing practice, you can also try this learning material, Alphabet Spin and Trace Worksheets.

Check out Vito's video using the sandpaper letters and the writing tray.

And that’s about it!  It’s a good thing that the montessori sandpaper letters arrived on time.  If you have questions just leave a comment or contact me through my email address.

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