Teach Kids to Spell Their Name with Kinetic Sand
Did you know you could teach kids to spell their name using kinetic sand? You most definitely can! It makes the process of learning their name very fun too!
As you all know by now, we love kinetic sand. My son prefers it over play dough any day. It is relatively mess free if you keep it on a tray or in a bin and it is just so much fun to play with.
I wrote a whole post on 10 different ways you can play with kinetic sand. Many of them are great for teaching kids practical life skills like pouring and scooping. Playing with kinetic sand is also a fun way to develop fine motor skills in kids. This is important for developing muscles in their hands that will eventually be used to write and do a variety of other tasks.
Although simply playing with it has so many benefits already, I like to stuff as much learning into one activity as possible so I decided to use it to teach Evan how to spell his name.
Materials Needed to Teach Your Child to Spell Their Name While Using Kinetic Sand
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Kinetic sand – we have this one and we got the orange kind from Michaels
Alphabet cookie cutters– this set includes the entire alphabet, plus a ton of other cookie cutters. It is so useful!
Using Kinetic Sand to Teach Your Child to Spell Their Name
Lay out the kinetic sand and a cookie cutter for each letter of their name. Flatten out the kinetic sand and use the cookie cutter to cut out the letters of your child’s name. You can have your child help you do this or they can do it on their own.
The process of cutting out the letters from the sand is great for fine motor development. It takes quite a bit of fine motor control to remove the cookie cutter from the sand pile.
As you are doing this you can talk about the letters in their name and the sounds they make. Once they are cut out, you should invite your child to help you put them in order so that they spell their name.
You can do this over and over for as long as your child wants. You could also spell family member’s names or classmate’s names as well. It is an excellent way to discuss letters and their sounds and then put them together to spell names. This makes letter learning even more meaningful for kids!
Here are some related posts I think you will enjoy!
10 Ways to Play with Kinetic Sand