Smooth Gradation Tablets

Smooth Gradation Tablets carry surfaces that shift from the smoothest to the least smooth, a difference the fingertips catch long before the eye does. The child touches each tablet with light fingertips, lays them out in a row from one extreme to the other and then runs a hand back along the row, where a tablet in the wrong place breaks the even change and gives itself away. Children often close their eyes and grade the tablets by touch alone, which sharpens the tactile sense and steadies the light hand that the sandpaper letters will ask for. Work begins around the third year, once a child enjoys naming what the fingers have found.