Hello, I have tried the Doman dots. My 2 year old son does not like them. He does, however, love the abacus. He seems to learn by touching things. If I were to modify the Doman program using the abacus, buttons, rocks, or other items, do you think it would work? Here is my plan:
Still have the numeral card. He does recognize them already
Show him the number card and related that to the objects in front of him
Please let me know what you think. Or, if you have a better idea, please share it with me.
I think your idea will work wonderfully and see no reason for it not to be. I suggest keeping jars of buttons, bags of rocks, etc around the house and garage. You could set 45 pebbles on a piece of paper, or in a shoe box. To play with throughout the day, Stitch 78 buttons on a piece of cloth etc. Always “check” to make sure all the objects are there in the end by counting or skip counting.
Also, print outs of various pictures, etc and making quantity books and such is a good idea and might be a lot of fun. you might try making the books on clear contact paper, so you just stick and press and fold over another piece of contact paper, lol. I got the idea from a blog, since the child hated glue with a passion his mom let him do “sticky” art on contact paper.
This is not a tactile activity, as you said your son prefers, but I have been using this with my son for a few days now and he seems to like it. He, too, is adverse to being shown the doman dots. I made up several cards depicting different ways to show numbers to ten: tally marks, fingers, “dominos”, 10 block (see attachment), and words. I flash these to him and play sorting games with him. He seems to like them. We also pull out the abacus every day after we finish our lunch and before our snack.
In regards to Mom2Bee’s idea about buttons, I think if you are going to go to that effort, it may be better (easier) to get 100 self-sticking pieces of white velcro (or buy a strip and attach it). I’d stick them onto white cloth so that it blends in (if your velcro is white). Then you can attach the hook pieces of velcro onto whatever you want (buttons are a good suggestion). You can pull and stick buttons to represent whatever quantity you want.