Activities & Days Out / 12 February, 2018 / Nanny Anita

Valentine’s Sugar Writing Tray

I do love bringing out the sensory writing tray for spelling practice. I think it helps break up the monotony of writing out spellings over and over again. We like to do the look, say, cover, write, and check approach. This technique is recommended by YC and EC’s school, but also by an educational psychologist who specialises in dyslexia. Rather than just write them out though, we sometimes switch it up so that they are using their finger to trace out the word in a sensory writing tray. Over the last couple of weeks we have had a Valentine’s sugar writing tray for them.

Make sure you follow my writing board on Pinterest for more ideas. Don’t forget to save the pin for later.

You will need:

• Sugar
• Red and Pink food colouring
• Tray
• Vanilla essence
• Zip lock bag or tuppawear container

As ours is a Valentine’s themed writing tray I decided to dye the sugar red and pink. Divide the sugar into 2 bags or containers and add a few drops of dye. Then shake them to spread the colour around. If you want to add an extra sensory experience to your Valentine’s sugar writing tray then add a couple of drops of vanilla essence to the bags as well before you shake them.

Once it is all evenly coloured add them both to your tray.

You will want a nice thin even covering.

To practice the spellings you can either test them and get them to simple write them out one at time. Or they can look, say, cover, write, and check. We opt for doing the latter.

The great thing about writing trays is that if they make a mistake they can simply shake the tray to make it disappear.

If you liked this Valentine’s sugar writing tray be sure to check out my word box activity and salt writing tray.

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