This post may contain affiliate ads at no cost to you. See my disclosures for more information.
As I’ve said before (see here and here and here), I like letter practice activities where kids don’t feel stressed out when they make a mistake because the mistakes can be easily erased. Such is the case with the activity I’m sharing today, which is is not only fun for kids but also provides a great sensory experience.
So without further ado, the next installment in my 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet Series is mess free letter painting.
The trick to making this a mess free activity is keeping the paint securely inside a plastic bag.
I squired a bit of purple tempera paint into a quart sized ziplock bag. You’ll have to play around with the right amount of paint for your baggie. If you add too little paint, there won’t be enough for kids to “paint” on. If you add too much, the paint will be too thick for kids to see what they’ve “painted.” (The paint is also more likely to leak out of the bag if you add too much.)
Note: this will not work with watercolor or acrylic paint. We used tempera, and I highly recommend you do as well.
Once I had the right amount of paint in the bag, I closed it and I then taped it to a small tray to make it easier to write on. (This also makes it less likely that my kids will accidentally open the bag and get paint on things.)
I invited my daughter to practice writing some letters. She simply used her fingers to “paint” the letter she wanted.
And erasing her work was as easy as squishing the bag to spread the paint evenly in the bag again.
And then she was on to practicing a new letter.
I love this mess free letter painting activity. This is a great sensory activity for kids who don’t like getting their hands dirty. It’s also a wonderful way to ensure that kids’ mistakes don’t overwhelm them, since they simply need to squish the bag to erase any letters that don’t turn out correct.
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
- Montessori sandpaper letters
- Smash the puffy letters
- Mini letter hunt with a magnifying glass
- Kinetic sand letters
- Crystallized letters
- Letter hop
- Letter tic-tac-toe
- Rainbow letters
You can find more ways to teach the alphabet on my Literacy Activities for Kids page and my Letter Learning Pinterest board.
Is this something that you can easily reuse or do you throw it away after a day or two?
I’ve loved this series. You’ve shared so many great ideas!
Oh yes, you can easily reuse it. Prior to the purple one I showed in my post I had a red one for over a year. Of course, depending on how often your kids use it and how rough they are on it, yours may last more or less time.