Monday, April 26, 2010

Numbers and Letters

We had school vacation last week and I wanted to work on letter formation with R and number formation with C.  R is just learning how to form some of the letters of the alphabet.  C occasionally writes his numbers backwards (I think this is pretty common for his age - 5).  Anyway, they both needed some practice and I didn't want it to be boring.

I was looking in the cupboards when I noticed a few boxes of Jello.  Instantly, I remembered a post my friend, Amy at Teach Mama, wrote a while back about writing in Jello.

I dumped some Jello powder on two trays and put C and R to work!  I called out letters for R and numbers for C.  At this point, R is working on forming uppercase letters. 


I called out two, and occasionally three, digit numbers for C to write.  The numbers 2, 3, and 7 seem to be the trickiest for him so I made certain to call out those numbers often.


The best part about this practice is that mistakes are easily fixed, just smooth out the Jello and start over.  I was able to sneak in a little letter and number formation, and C and R just thought it was fun! 


Yummy too!

8 comments:

Gidget Girl Reading said...

so cute! they did a great job love the R and his numbers are great!

love the picture of the licking of fingers!

I'll have to do this with gidget!

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I have to try this with flour or sugar (no jello in the house). Anna is very uninterested in writing letters on paper, but maybe writing on a new surface will tickle her curiosity. Love the last picture :)

Jenny said...

We did this with sugar last year and Abby and Matthew loved it. Great idea with Jello!

Ticia said...

OH man, and then my kids would be asking what color their tongue is, but I'm sure we will be doing this soon enough.
And, yes forming them backwards is totally common. I had a first grade student who wrote his entire alphabet backwards one day and didn't even realize it.

Valerie @ Inner Child Fun said...

What a great idea! Emily would LOVE doing this!!

Julie said...

Funny we were both posting about writing letters yesterday. I should get C to do some too, as he also writes some of his letters and numbers backwards occasionally. Good idea!

Susana said...

OH, you changed the kids pics too--they look super!!

Susana said...

This is a good and fun idea. You are so good at following through with ideas like these.

That last picture of R is cute!

Your new profile pic is great!