Metal Insets , Writing

 

Metal insets are one of the keys to literacy is what I have heard. Hmm,  it's true, maybe because it is one of the keys that lead you to write. It prepares the hands - the mechanism to write. When such a hand comes to the writing, it can then follow the will of the individual. But this writing ability is prepared through metal insets.

Earlier preparation:

• Lots and lots of tracing and moving around geometric figures. The hand has to go around different geometry figures- sometimes short, sometimes long
• Many different forms of repetition of exercises with geometric cabinets.

    A hand which is capable of delineating a precise contour, and an eye, which is able to follow the movement of the hand, is indirectly prepared to draw and write.

        

        So our role is to Observe how they trace and how they have control of moving around the figures goes before we present the metal inset.

Point of interest for us while presenting:

1. Start with an ellipse or circle as they have no angles. With an ellipse the area to be filled is narrower, making it easier, to begin with.
2. 
    When we draw around the frame, we draw the outline smaller than the frame.
3.  When we draw around the inset, we draw something that is larger than the inset.
4. Eventually, you have to hold the pencil at the same angle through both outlining if we want to see two concentric figures.
5.  3 pencils each serve a purpose - freedom with limits
6.  We draw the strokes as light as possible.

What is the progression we need to observe?

     In filling in the outline of the inset using the third pencil too, the child is offered a technique and certain limits. He is told to make light strokes, as light as possible, and not to go out of the limits of the inner circle, until the control of lightness is acquired. The idea is to give the child the capacity of holding the pencil and acquiring an elasticity in holding the pencil so that he need not have to make horizontal parallel lines at first. Initially, the child makes heavy enormous lines, but after a week or two he acquires the light touch. He is also told that while filling the outline with parallel lines he must start at one extremity and go to the other. In the beginning, the child finds it a bit difficult. We can only teach the child the exact technique, we must not force him to follow it. Gradually he acquires lightness of touch, and gradually the pencil mark is hardly visible. Each line is fine like that of a light pen line.

These drawings somehow restrain the hand so that it leads to the coordination of mechanical movements needed for handwriting. 

What to do next? 

    This drawing eventually leads to the development of decorative art.  It leads children to explore the composition of shapes and the relationships between them.  Now, though, it is a drawing, it's not a drawing that represents anything in the environment like flowers. Now attention is on the line and hand and hence the preparation. 

    With many figures combined, the hand is helped to fill in little spaces, to make big strokes, to fill in large spaces, to make little hooks.