Tactile Alphabet Journals

Each week we learn about a new letter. Throughout the week, we do different activities to reinforce the letter. One of my favorite activities is the tactile alphabet journal. This works on so many different skills: sensory, fine motor skills, letter knowledge, and letter sounds/writing. Along with our tactile pages, we also read a poem focusing on the letter of the week. In the poem, we highlight rhyming words, popcorn words, and the letter of the week. We do this first as a class on the smartboard, and then together in their journals! 

Below are some examples:

M is for macaroni!

B is for buttons!

Just another way to think outside the box to reinforce our letters. The kiddos LOVE their journals and look forward to guessing the mystery object they will glue in each week.

You can grab my Tactile Alphabet Journal pages here on my TpT store.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sensory Rice

I am so so excited to introduce my class to sensory rice! I have been wanting to do this forever, and thanks to a day off in the middle of the week, I gathered all the supplies and made the rice! Thank you to especiallyeducation.com for the easy DIY steps!

First, I bought all the materials:

• food coloring
• zip lock bags (gallon size)
• a bag of rice (depending on how much rice you want, this will vary. I bought a 10 lb bag, but I definitely need more!)
• isopropyl alcohol

Next, I placed the rice into gallon bags. Do one bag for each color you want to make.

Then, I squeezed in the food coloring and the alcohol (about 1 1/2 tablespoons for each bag). I used one whole tube. You can use more tubes if you want the rice to be a brighter color.

After the food coloring and alcohol were in the bags, I squished the bags around to spread out the color. As you can see, my mom really enjoyed this part!

Finally, I poured each bag into and aluminum throw away pan, and left them outside to dry. I left mine out to dry all day and night.

And boom! You have sensory rice for your kiddos to explore!

There are many ways you can use sensory rice in your classroom. To start easy, I mixed in magnet letters and had children sift through the rice to find certain letters. Once they found the letter, they had to match it to the correct letter on their alphabet chart. You can also put various objects in the rice, and have students pull out all the objects that start with a certain letter. There are so many possibilities! Enjoy!