When we began working with Kris, we used Wedgits to work on imitation skills and following instructions. Hope would pick up a Wedgit piece and place in front of herself, instructing Krissy to do the same. "Get red." When Krissy sat there blankly, Hope would take her hand and assist her in the task, rewarding her as soon as she did it. Hope would then pick another color, and add it to her tower, prompting Krissy to do the same. "Now get yellow." As Krissy progressed, Hope used hand-over-hand teaching less and less, and Krissy began to understand and follow the verbal directions alone.

Eventually, when Krissy was finally able to follow the verbal directions consistently, Hope began to use one of the design cards. She would point to the first component of a simple tower, and instruct Krissy to, "Get red." Then blue, yellow, green, etc. until the design was completed. As Krissy caught on, Hope worked at giving fewer and fewer directions until Krissy was able to build entire towers by herself. Eventually we were able to hand Krissy 3 design cards and she would assemble each independently. This progress took place over the course of about a month, and the process helped her to grasp a number of concepts such as following simple directions, understanding the assembling of parts to make a whole, and seeing the relationship between a 2-D card and a 3-D block.

We pulled out the Wedgits again when we were working on language skills, particularly prepositions and adverbs. Giving Krissy a very simple card, and keeping the blocks for ourselves, we would prompt her to tell us how to build the tower. We started slowly, and she would tell us "Green." "Yellow." "White." but soon made it more difficult by deliberately placing the piece incorrectly, for instance placing the yellow piece on the table, instead of on top of the tower. "No! Yellow on blue." Once she had mastered that level, we made it more difficult again. She had to specify whether the piece was to go on top of the existing piece, or not. Were we supposed to use a big green piece or a little green piece? Not only did this give us a way to work on her language skills, but it also addressed her problem- solving abilities, as she had to figure out how to correct purposeful errors. Because her reward did not come until the tower matched the card, she was motivated to assemble it correctly.

Other skills which can be addressed with Wedgits include fine-motor skills, sequencing, matching of identical objects, matching cards to objects, colors, sizes, serration, (arranging items systematically – for instance largest to smallest) spatial skills and so much more.

View all the Wedgits available from Timberdoode Co