For all my homeschool parents, here is a super fun way to work on writing letters, words & shapes. Izzy loves using the sand to create letters, words and shapes.
The first thing you want to do is find a low edge pan or box such as this & then you will add some sand to it. I linked some options below for you guys, along with colored sand. We plan to do colored sand throughout this year to keep it exciting!
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You also can add some fun to it by adding little figures to the sand. For some kids this may be distracting, but for others, this may help them stay engaged & learning.
First you want to let your child explore the sand. Maybe start with an activity of looking for things in the sand that start with the letter you are working on or the theme of the word. For example, butterflies for the word butterfly. They aren’t going to focus on writing letters, if they haven’t first been able to explore the sand.
For the sand writing activity you can teach so many things, let’s start first with teaching letters. One option is to put a letter “B“ card sitting up in the sand, like the word “BUTTERFLY” shown in the image above. You can now ask your child what letter they see & what sound that letter makes. Then you can say, “Letter B makes this sound.” —make the letter sound—
Now you can model how to make letter be and say the steps as you do it. “Letter B starts with a big line down. Now a little curve and a little curve.” Finally it is your child’s turn to practice writing letter B.
You can also work on writing words & spelling. Follow the same steps for writing letters. You may need to use a tiny brush, wooden writing utensil or have a larger pan for words.
Click here to the Insect themed lessons blog post to see more like this.
XO Eryka