(1068) Writing in sand

I was a special education tutor in Silver City for 12 long years. In the process of trying to teach whom others termed as unteachable, I met or talked to a few other colleagues in the area. None of us were trained, as it was a very new field in this third world country then (20 years ago).

Every single one of these teachers, homemakers, grandmas are unique and worth their weight in gold. As we can imagine, no one who thinks in terms of money would meddle with difficult and emotional children, touchy parents and the like. One in particular, I'll call her Lydia here, is knowledgeable and helpful to initiate me into her methodologies. She told me in details how to teach writing the letters of the alphabet in a basin of sand. She herself taught her pupils outdoor in her loggia. As you can appreciate, we Asians walk bare feet in our homes, no one can tolerate sand in the living room. Most home tutors use the dining table for tutoring.

I personally never have to resort to sand writing with my pupils. But I can appreciate it is a very good sensorial method that is cheap and easily available. When I was five or so, I used to go very early to kindergarten or Standard one in my first school. Thereupon I would spend an hour or more writing Chinese characters, numbers and letters (a,b,c...) with sticks on the sandy ground. Perhaps that was my sand writing therapy, unknowingly.