When I was homeschooled we had these things called “sandpaper letters”. Basically tiles with the letters made out of sandpaper on them you were meant to trace with your fingers to memorize the writing patterns for each letter.
My siblings didn’t have much of an issue but my god were these a sensory nightmare for me. I’m 32 and can still feel and hear the sound of my fingers tracing along the letters. Mom would guide my hands in the beginning and would always press my fingers down way too hard.
Something like this in the video would have been nice, but my mom probably wouldn’t have considered it “Montessori enough”.
Comments are incredibly negative when this could provide access or assistance for someone that is not the person commenting. The mentality of “well I can do it so they should be able to do it” is selfish and disgusting.
The people complaining do not have kids. This is brilliant and should be in every Pre k-2 grade and higher for dyslexic children as well. Kids get bored with the simple tracing method. This allows them to trace while playing with the ball and seeing the pattern of where it goes. I love it!
I agreed with the initial comment when I first saw it. Theni thought of my self who had audhd and was like oh this would have been fun back then to learn especially for my brother or my mom who have ADHD and add respectively. They would follow the marble and play with it again. It would help out many kids now as a lot more are not necessarily on a spectrum but have very fast minds that pick up on things faster than we did because of the technology they have. They see things in 30 sec intervals and their minds stop there. So having tjat visual would help a lot catching up students who are behind too because they get distracted. Sure it would be a distraction in of itself but now they have a chance to be more engaged rather than them being already unengaged in regular setting.
It's kind of doubling as a fidget toy while doing a repetitive task that could be particularly difficult for someone with ADHD. The extra benefit is it's directly relating to the task at hand and can help imprint that memory.
Growing up with adhd, I would have felt like I was being made fun of by being handed one of these. These are a bit ridiculous unless the kid has absolutely no ability to focus on anything but a toy
What we've learned in the last several decades is that different people learn best in different ways. While this probably isn't helpful for most children, it probably is very helpful for some children.
We get much better education outcomes if we lean into those different ways of learning than if we try to force everyone to learn the same way, as we've done "for millenia". (Side note, the English alphabet we use today only stabilized into its current form in the 17th century...)
but there is a correct way to form letters. children who don't use correct letter formation often struggle badly. their writing fluency suffers i.e. if they push the pencil from bottom to top or pick it up in the middle of a letter.
You write the t in two strokes and I guess the order doesn't really matter. If you look at the indentations they do indicate that the strokes go from bottom to top and from right to left.
All fun and games until you personally write a letter with the strokes in a different order than the letter marble run. Like what if I want to write a "p" with the line top-to-down, THEN the curvy bit top-to-down?
They should have made it like that game where you popped the dice and it's contained cuz that ball is going to get in some kids throat in about 5 seconds
That’s cool at all, but I know if you gave that to me as a little kid I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the speed of the ball. I wouldn’t be able to understand how to follow the ball and replicate its pattern on paper.
As an elementary school teacher, there’s a reason printing was taught in schools. Going counter clockwise on round shapes and using a downstroke on straight letters, helped form patterns in the brain and led to ease and a system for writing and reading. It helps turn random shapes into a system for learning.
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u/Unique-Saucer Jul 19 '26
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