Number Recognition

Does he have the same difficulty with recognizing letters of the alphabet? Or is it just numbers he has trouble with?

Kathy G.

My son has always had this. The lindamood bell people call this symbol imagery. They can’t hold the pictures of the symbols in their heads. They can’t visualize. Most of us do this automatically without even think about it.

I have learned that my son’s problem is related to some severe vision issues for which he is thankfully receiving vision therapy.

Maybe you already tried this, but what about making numbers daily with playdough or clay. Then even try to let them dry out and put them in a bag and have him guess with his hands the “mystery shape”.

Also, have you tried getting your family together and using bodies of people to form the numbers. I mean actually getting on the floor in the shape of the number with members of your family? Sounds weird, but you never know.

There is also a thing called I think a Wicki Sticki, which is kind of like wax in a long stick form. Kids like this stuff. Have him make the numbers with these.

Get a place mat for his dinner plate with numbers on them.

Get one of those wooden puzzels with wooden numbers.

Also, he could use those “dots’ markers to dot out in the shape of the numbers.

Have you done Visuallizing Verbalizing with him?

Have you had him practice in colored sand, writing the numbers in the sand?

What have you already tried?

Michele,

I have the VV and the seeing stars material. VV is more for visualizing concepts and seeing stars is more for the symbol imagery issues. My son has no difficulty visualizing concepts and therefore has excellent comprehension.
My son can recognize the letters and numbers now but he still can not visualize the symbols well enough to recognize visually when a word is spelled wrong. He is a phonetic speller.We did seeing stars for awhile and he could visualize the letters when I was working with him sometimes, but it was difficult for him and sometimes he just couldn’t do it at all.
One thing that worked for writing symbols was to walk the symbol. He had trouble with the cursive f so I drew it very big with sidewalk chalk in the driveway and once he walked he could write it.

The bottom line for my son is his vision issues. They are pretty severe but they are getting better and his spelling is improving as his vision improves.

Our vision therapist does visualization techniques but not before the vision (input) issues are worked out.

His tutor used shaving cream to get him to feel the letters a few years ago. I guess it helped but she wasn’t able to get him to read.

Linda,
Thanks for explaining it to me. :)

By the way, I was telling my sister to do the bath activities and I just found this when I was doing a search for Foam Bath Letters for her daughter.

FINGER PAINT BATH TUB RECIPI:
you can make your own bath finger paints they wash off easily
and they are very safe i found this idea in a preschooler
cookbook. take a cupcake cup and fill it up with shaving
cream add 6 drops of food coloring and use a paint brush to
paint !my daughter loves it she wont go into the tub without
it

You never know if these will work until you try. It might not solve problem about remembering the letters but at least the kid will have fun in the tub.
Michelle

It’s just numbers. sigh

Dee

Good ideas, we’ve done a lot of those things. We’re starting to invent our own kinesthetic numbers on the advice of the school pyschologist.

Thanks for the input!

Dee