A new alphabet activity -

I’m not sure if you have ever used these, but I am in love with alphabet pasta! It is cheap, and super versatile. With our toddlers we would use it to explore textures, introducing it raw the first day so that they could feel the rough, bumpy, tiny little letters, and then cooking it for the second day to see how they reacted to the slimy, and sometimes sticky texture – it was mesmerizing.

Now that we have older children we have spent a lot of time focusing on letter recognition, and this was an obvious choice for a number of different activities. We did a letter hunt (can you find a B in the pile of letters?) We created a great printable for this, so that the children were able to keep track of all of the letters that they found.

I also did some brainstorming with random odds and ends from our donated art supplies, and we discovered a great new tool for the classroom – we made letter search tiles. We simply used Elmer’s glue to stick the letter pasta (uncooked) to tile samples from the hardware store. Then we used tempera paint to make everything the same color (the metallic paint seemed to work the best). The children loved making these, and I can’t wait to get them out for our writing shelf, then they can play “What letters can I find” whenever they want. They aren’t available for the children yet because I’m thinking that I will add a quick layer of mod-podge on top just to be safe.