Leprechaun's Letters: An Alphabet Sensory Tub

This week has been a little funny as Little Brother came down with a stomach bug early on. And although it only lasted 24 hours, it still threw off our routines a little for the whole week. It also meant a stay home day with just mommy for Little Brother, which he always enjoys.

In order to create something fun for us to do one on one, I put together a new sensory tub: Leprechaun's Letters, an Alphabet Sensory Tub.

Lately Little Brother has really become interested in letters, especially as he's watched Big Brother take off in reading. Little Brother's been working hard to identify letters on his own and asking questions about letters. So why not combine the upcoming holiday with some fun, letter explorations? And of course a Leprechaun would have golden letters in with their treasure! 

For the letters I spray painted a set of cardboard scrapbook letters gold on both sides. (I've also seen these same types of letters at different craft stores already gold.)

Once  the letters were dry I added them into a medium tub along with dried split peas, foam shamrocks, plastic coins (these ones were from The Dollar Tree in their regular party section), and a few plastic bead necklaces cut into pieces. 

At first I just set the bin on the floor and let Little Brother explore. In the beginning he started pulling out letters, trying to find the ones he could recognize. He also started asking about the ones he didn't know. We built his name and a few other names he knew. 

Little Brother also explored the textures of tub, especially the dried split peas. 

A little later in the day we added in the letter dice from our Scattergories board game. This time when someone rolled it they had to find the matching letter. When he knew the letter, Little Brother would start looking right away. When he didn't know it he'd ask me what it was and then together we'd search through the bin. 

It was also cool to see how Big Brother interacted with it when he got home. First he explored creating names he knew and then he started building sight words.  

We had a lot of fun exploring letters in such a colorful and tactile way. I'm sure we'll find some other ways to explore the bin over the rest of the next week. 

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