Jell-o Letter practice

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I got a bit sick, and as usual I decided I would ignore it until it went away. Turns out, that's really not the best thing to do sometimes. I felt awful for a few days, and then I decided it was time to get on with life. (Plus I had a birthday party to set up for Kaydence) Then the day after the party it really hit me and I ended up in the ER! It wasn't that bad though, I was only there for a few hours. I got some medicine and got back on my feet. We did have a few days that we didn't do much besides watch movies and Netflix though. To make myself feel better about letting them watch so much TV I made sure that they at least spent a lot of that time watching Leap Frog DVDs. I love those, Kaydence loves them. She learned her letter sounds from those DVDs.

Today I wanted to work on learning how to write letters. Kaydence loves tracing lines on paper, but that get's boring after a while. So I decided to make a salt tray with alphabet cards. For the tray I used the wooden box that came with our Melissa and Doug sewing cards. I cut up some craft paper and wrote a letter on each one. (FYI, heavier paper would be better than what I used. ) I chose to use Jell-o instead of salt. Mainly because I had a lot of jell-o. I always buy Jell-o and then remember that we never eat it. My kids LOVE tasting anything they are playing with, and I thought Jell-o would feel like a treat. Plus, I can remember doing something similar to this with my Mom. The Jell-o always made it more fun. So here is what it looked like when I was finished. It was really easy to put together. The cards are nothing fancy, and I am going to buy heavier paper or possibly index cards. You can see through this paper. I had to prop it up with the Jell-o box in the back to get them to stay up.

Nolan also got a tray with Jell-o. He got mixed colors. He had a blast playing with it and licking his fingers. 

This was really fun. Before each letter I asked her if she would like for me to show her how to write it, if she said yes I showed her. Then she would erase it and do it by herself. A few times she wanted to try by herself, and if she got confused we did it together. 

I made an effort to be extra enthusiastic every time she finished a letter. I her to know she is doing great, it's a great motivator for her to want to keep learning. 

Around this time she asked for a straw. She held it like a pencil and wrote with it. It worked great! 

We made it to the letter G and she said she was finished. She asked for a spoon and a bowl. She 

spent quite a bit of time transferring the Jell-o back and forth with her spoon.

"Hang on Mommy, I need to get my princess."