Find the crayon resist letters {101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet}

This activity takes a bit of prep work, but it’s worth it. You’ll be glad you tried this when your child discovers the first “magical” letter, gets a huge smile on her face, and then races to find more letters on the paper.

The next installment in my 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet Series is an activity called Find the Crayon Resist Letters.

Here is how I set up this activity. I placed the following materials on a tray:

• Watercolor paint (We own Colorations Liquid Watercolor Paints from Discount School Supply, and we use them all time in so many different ways. But you can also purchase quality liquid watercolors from Amazon.)
• A small cup for holding the liquid watercolor paint
• Paint brush
• Sheet of white paper on which several letters have been pre-written using a white crayon
• Sheet of paper with blank spots for child to write in the letters she finds
• Pencil
• Paper towels to wipe up any spills or excess ink

The key to this activity is the use of white crayon to write letters on the paper. The letters will not be visible when your child sees the paper, but they will become visible when your child adds liquid watercolor paints to the paper. This is because the crayon will resist the paint, leaving a white letter behind when the rest of the paper turns colors.

I’ve used this crayon resist technique before in our Magic Appearing Letters activity. Here I re-purposed the crayon resist technique by using it in a slightly different manner.

For this activity, I invited my daughter to begin painting on the white sheet of paper. It wasn’t long before she discovered the first letter on her paper.

She got excited when she saw the first letter, and eagerly continued looking for new letters.

Once she had found all the letters, I asked her to fill them in on the little worksheet I had prepared for her.

This was a good opportunity to name each letter, state its sound, and then practice writing it correctly.

When finished, you may want to invite your child to make his or her own crayon resist letters and then “find” them by painting over them.

More ways to teach to the alphabet

More alphabet posts from Gift of Curiosity:

• Letter hunt sensory bin
• Erasing letters with a Q-tip
• I spy letter hunt
• Spaghetti letters
• Letter puzzles
• Making “alphabet soup”
• Smash the puffy letters
• Mini letter hunt with a magnifying glass
• Kinetic sand letters
• Crystallized letters
• Letter hop
• Yarn wrapped letters
• Rainbow letters

You can find more ways to teach the alphabet on my Literacy Activities for Kids page and my Letter Learning Pinterest board.