Rainbow Sand

We had some left over coloured sand and I thought it would be neat to explore it on our light table . I covered the table with a clear garbage bag in order to protect the surface from getting scratched and also to make clean up easier. 

The rainbow presentation made it immediately appealing to my son, who couldn't wait to get his fingers in it.

As he slowly and carefully swirled his finger, he mixed the colours together. They looked like a 'colour explosion' he observed!

The light from below shone through the sand, illuminating it in places where it wasn't as thickly layered. My son loved the feel of the sand and spent a great deal of time grabbing it and letting it trickle through his fingers.

After a while he decided that he wanted to do some writing in the sand. We practiced the first letter of his name over and over.

We also used other materials to create the letter "c". Here we layered rocks on top of the "c" he had already printed in the sand.

This would be a great tactile experience for anyone wishing to engage children in some small group or individual letter writing/identification work, especially those of you who engage in RTI experiences in your classroom. Children would be motived to participate by the nature of the messy materials, use of the light table, and tactile experience of constructing the letters.

Name and Letter Recognition

We have been working on practising name recognition/writing and upper and lower case letter recognition around here. Because the light table is such a hit, I thought we'd combine these into some fun activities.

First I wrote Caleb's name on some acetate we had around the house. I used a black permanent marker. 

Caleb was eager to 'spell' his name using some special stones. As he worked we discussed the name of the letters and how they were shaped. He was excited to see how beautiful the name became as he completed each letter.

I also used a permanent marker with some clear, decorative stones to create alphabet stones for the light table. We put them on the table in a big group and played 'I spy' together ("I spy the letter 'L'").



We then found the letters in Caleb's name and wrote that together.

He was also eager to spell his sister's name.

We then sorted and grouped the letters, discussing which were upper case and which were lower case.

Any of these activities would be great for children who are in need of additional support for name recognition/printing and letter recognition. Using the light table is very enticing to many - specifically those children engaging in RTI activities during small groups or playtime!