Basic Exercises

1. Straw and lid of a bottle

straws and lids

How to use it: Each kid has a straw and lid of a bottle. The teacher draws examples at the board and draws the circle on the left or right side eather up or down. The kid using his/her material has to recognize the position of the circle and puts it on the right place of the stick.

Variation: Place the poster with the different straws and lids on the wall or the board in front of the class and ask the children which of them (they all have numbers) you want them to execute. Like this you can walk around in the classroom and verify if they are doing well or if they have problems.

Aim: With this exercises the child can practise spacial orientation. By using a middle line and a small circle the child experiences both sides (left and right) and also up and down.

2. The Arrows

How to use it: The teacher has a paper with a big arrow and holds it into one of the four dircetions: left, right, up or down. When the teacher holds it to one side, the child puts the arm of that side into a 90 degree angle like the direction of the arrow. When the arrow shows “up” the pupil holds both hands up to the sky and when the arrow shows “down” the kid is folding the knees, going down with the body.

Variation: In this application we also used the poster with the different arrows (doc. ?), put it on the wall or the board in front of the class. The children do together the first line ect. Or the teacher shows without a special order which arrow the child shall translate into a movement next. Then always four children came in front of the class and executed the seriation. At this moment we were checking the children. When we found one that had problems with the exercise one of us of the foundation went outside of the class and practiced the exercises document ?. Mostly the children were much more successful with the arrow exercise after doing the exercises of document ?

Aim: The child experiences with the hole body the four directions without using the words.

3. Document with the line and circle

how to use it: On the document the teacher shows one of the possibilities and this time the child moves the hole body according to the picture. (Add picture of a person moving his body!) When the circle is on the right side and up and the child lifts the right arm up. When it is on the right side down it puts his right arm down in a 45-degree angle apart from the body. Is the same for the left side.

Aim: The child experiences with the hole body the four directions without using the words left and right and gets the idea of a middle line. The sensation for the child is that his body at this moment is like a middle line and the arms integrate the four basic directions according to that line.

4. Recognizing Shapes

All the next 15 pages of exercises are based on the idea that the child regognizes basic forms and directions. The child by association finds the identic picture on the other side. Those are again basic to learning in any language.

5. Sequences

There are a lot of different possiblities where we need to keep in mind a sequence in a special order.
For example when you ask in the street for an explication to find a place and you get the answer: First you follow straight this street. After the 3. trafficlight go to the left, then after the second cross to the right and when there comes a red building you have to take the next street left and then it is the 3. house on the right side.
Or if you work for somebody and he asks you: “Please go first to my neighbour and bring me my hammer back, then go to the shop and by some nails, go to my house and in the second floor in the room on the left side there is a picture with a tree that I want to have put above the shelf …”
Padagoges and psychologes give the capacity to keep sequences in mind more and more importance because they are a basic skills in life. But they need practise.
The following exercises helps to practise this skill. Some are oral and some are visual.

- I put three chairs (or one table) with different objects on it in front of the kid. There is also a paper on one chair that contains the exercise like:
1. Take the blue pan from the first chair
2. Take the scissors and put them on the first chair
3. Take the yellow pensil from the third chair
So let the child first read the paper and than let him execute it without the paper.
To practise this exercise in an oral way you can read the paper to the child and again let him execute what is written on the paper.