Touching the Alphabet

Touching the Alphabet

Do you have children who are struggling with their letter sense?  How about kids who love to touch and feel everything?  Do you just need more sparkle in your life?

Here's a fun, inexpensive, easy to do, hands-on display for the Alphabet.

What you will need:

• Posterboard 
• Glitter in various colors
• Hot Glue Gun
• White School Glue
• Small Paintbrush

Note:  I used half sheets of white posterboard, but I think bigger pages or different colors could make it more interesting to look at.

What you do:

1. Section off your posterboard.  Give yourself plenty of room to draw a capital and lowercase letter.  I did six letters per page.
2. Draw your letters in pencil.  I did fairly thin letters but thick ones would be good, too.
3. Here is the tricky part.  Trace your letters using a hot glue gun.  Make as thick of a line as possible over your letters. This takes time and patience, and I can't tell you how many times I accidentally strung out the glue.  The good news is that very thin strands of hot glue will come off of paper pretty easily.  Just roll your fingers over them after they dry.
4. Wait for the hot glue to dry.  Your letters are now 3-D.  Time to make them colorful.
5. You want a thin layer of white glue on top of your dried hot glue.  The glitter can get clumpy if you use too much.  I drew thin lines of glue over my letters with the nozzle, then used a small paintbrush to totally coat the top and sides with glue.  I kept tissues handy so that I didn't get any glue puddles in the corners.
6. I did one letter at the time, as I was using different color glitter for each.  I fully coated the glue with glitter and shook off the excess onto a piece of scrap paper, then turned the paper into a funnel and put the glitter back into its bottle. (I know you know how to use glitter.) 
   

You're done!  Your alphabet is now three dimensional, it catches the light, and it feels just a little scratchy to fingers that touch it.  The kids will want to run their hands over this again and again, learning the shapes and motions to make upper- and lower-case letters!