ABSTRACT
The Chalkboard and Desk Templates have one major purpose—the development of form perception as a prerequisite to symbol manipulation and interpretation. However, Program V has at least seven subsidiary purposes which are to help children develop: special control of hand movements, bilaterality of hands, kinesthesis of direction of movement, integration of eye-hand actions and visual-tactual information, visual discrimination of figure-ground, comprehension of basic forms, and perceptions of size, shape, contour, likenesses and differences as the basics to symbolic interpretations. The Template controls the end result—the shape of the drawing—but the motor act and the perceptual interpretation are controlled and produced by the children. The geometric shapes of the Templates have a greater perceptual relativity to letters. The progression is from simple to complex, large to small, all in accordance with the way children grow and learn and when they have mastered these perceptions, they are closer to being truly ready to cope with letter perception.
