I love the sandpaper letters. They were the first Montessori materials we made. We started out making the Montessori script version, which I plan to use later. Currently, we’re working with the cursive ones.

Mali knows the phonetic sound of 22 of the symbols. I used the sequence recommended here. I’m amazed at how painless this has been…for the both of us.

Some folks recommend that you don’t attempt to make the make the sandpaper letters. I haven’t bought any, so I can’t make any recommendations on where to buy them. I had a blast making them and would do it again. The cursive ones were hand painted. The D’Nelian ones were spray painted. I was amazed by how easy it was to cut the letters from sandpaper. I printed out templates and then cut each letter section and stapled it to the sandpaper. Then I cut the template out from the sandpaper. It was quite easy, just a bit tedious . Then I glued the sandpaper to the MDF boards. I cleaned them up with soapy water and kazaaam!

We do three letters a day. He almost always remembers them from one day to the next. If he can’t, he traces the letter to recall the sound. This stuff is like magic, folks…

At first, we used only one finger to trace the sandpaper, but after reading the wonderful language album provided by Montessori Printshop, we switched to using two fingers. My son likes this much better. We always lay out a nice mat on the table before we begin. Go here for the sounds of each symbol. I’ll post my templates for sandpaper letters soon, in case anyone would like to use them. I love the bigger cursive ones and if I weren’t so lazy, I’d make the D’Nealian ones larger too.