What to fill with
Fill homemade cubes with materials you don’t need around the house. Look for some of the following in your closet or shop at the hardware store for the most inexpensive options. Select fillers as follows:
Iron - sonorous
Place nuts, thimbles, coins, metal plugs, and bells inside. Place 4 coins (nuts, corks) in small iron cubes, and 8 coins in large ones.
Wooden ones sound dull and noisy
Remains of cardboard, pieces of wood, plastic buttons and beads, cereals, matches, small construction elements, small pebbles, broken shells are suitable.
Golden ones can be sung, these are vowels
Take any material from the list for ringing cubes.
Iron-wood rustling, heavier than iron-wood
Fill them with two types of material. For example, nuts and paper.
White - silent
Fill it tightly with pieces of fabric so that the child feels the weight.
It is very important not to use the same filler for cubes of different types. Zaitsev's method is based on tactile sensations and auditory association. If the warehouses sound the same, then the training will go wrong. Put a lot of filler into the double and large components of a homemade set, and half as much into the small ones.
On a note! Zaitsev's method is effectively used in teaching Russian as a foreign language to adults. After 4–6 lessons, students read fluently and pronounce most words clearly.
What is included in Zaitsev's reading kit
The learning kit includes 12 types of dice and wall-mounted storage charts. To read syllables outside the home, you can additionally print small A4 cards.
The bulk of the time spent making the activity kit will be spent on the cubes. Remember that they differ in weight, size, color and filling.
In total you need to make 52 pieces:
- Big gold ones . These are the vowels A-O-U-Y-E. The letters are written in red, the base is yellow.
- Small gold ones . These are the vowels E-Y-Y-Y-I. The warehouses are brown, the base is yellow.
- Large yellow-orange (iron-gold) .
Warehouses with two letters: consonants B, V, M, G, D, Z, L, N, R + vowels A, O, U, E, Y. For example, MA, BA, VA, GA, YES and so on. Write the letters in blue. Make warehouses with consonants B, V, M + vowels in duplicate. Additionally, make a cube for each consonant without a vowel pair: B, V, M, G, Z, L, N, R. - Small yellow-orange (iron-gold) . This is a combination of the consonants B, V, M, G, D, Z, N, R, L with the soft sign b and the vowels E-Y-Y-Y-I. For example, B-BE-BY-BY-BY-BY and so on. Warehouses with a soft sign are written in blue-green, the rest - in blue-blue.
- Double large iron-gold . Warehouses Ж, Ж+ь, А, О, Ё, Е, И, У. Write the letters in blue.
- Small iron (steel shade) . This is the letter Y. Write it in blue. This is the heaviest cube.
- Large wooden and gold ones . Two pieces each: P, K+O-A-E-Y-U, two copies of K, P without vowels. One each: the warehouses F, T, S, X + vowels O-A-E-Y-U, and one copy of the consonants F, T, S, X without vowels. For P, K, F, T, S, X you need blue, for others - blue-blue.
- Large double wooden and gold . These are the warehouses Ш, Ц + ь, А, О, У, Ё, Е, И. To combine a consonant and a vowel, use blue-blue font color, for Шь - blue-green. Don't forget to make separate cubes for Ш and Ц without a vowel, color blue.
- Small wooden-gold ones . Two copies each of the warehouses P, K, F, T + b, I, E, Yu, I, E. One each of C, X+b, I, Yu, I, E, E. Warehouses b + consonant write in blue-green in font, the rest in blue-blue.
- Double small wooden and gold . These are the consonants Ch, Shch separately and in pairs with the letters b, o, a, e, e, u, i. Chch, Shch write in blue-green font, Ch, Shch - in blue, the rest - in blue-blue.
- Large wooden and iron . These are warehouses with b + consonants V, B, D, Z, S, T. The font color is blue-green.
- Small white . Punctuation marks: comma, period, question mark, exclamation mark, hyphen, accent.
Important! Nikolai Aleksandrovich Zaitsev uses names to denote sound: iron are voiced consonants, wooden are voiceless, golden are vowels. When choosing a filler for cubes, be guided by this author’s classification.
