I was cleaning up the materials shelves the other day--they've been woefully neglected for sometime. The cleaning made the sandpaper letters very noticeable, especially since I was standing right there. My 4yo niece saw them and just *had* to go practise some right away. :)
A few days later, I was cleaning out a box I had just thrown a bunch of stuff into and there were the insets. I put them on the table and the same niece just *had* to do some. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to sneakily re-present them to her. She's an independent sort and if she's already been shown something, doesn't really like to have someone show it to her again. Sort of an attitude of, "You've already shown me this, you know!" So I started one inset while she worked on tracing others and asked her if she remembered how I'd done all the tiny lines before. Instead of doing all the lines close together, I told her how dd and ds used to do them, and did one with the lines all very far apart. I said it was okay if they started out like that and that they would get closer and closer together with practice. Ah, my indirectness paid off: she made her first real attempt at doing an inset with the lines in the middle. :)
My next step is to figure out what I would actually like to show her and try to help her connect with the materials more often and make sure the shelves have things well placed. I also still haven't figured out any sort of plan for with the older kids. However, I guess it's only been the first week, we've been ridiculously busy, and next week isn't any better. *sigh* I guess the week after!
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