D has been going to school since he was 8 weeks old. Back in May, we had to pull him out due to me losing my job. I feel so lazy with him! I was feeling like I needed to break into some learning activities.

He loves to help me cook and put things together. So when he heard I was making him “something fun,” he was all in. I decided to make him an ISpy bag with letters. He knows his letters but I thought we could use it to practice letter sounds and lowercase letters. We colored rice (I let him choose the colors) and then added some stickers.

Here is your supply list:
*2 cups of white rice
*1 quart sized ziploc bag
*1 gallon sized ziploc bag
*Food coloring
*Rubbing alcohol (1-2 cap fulls)
*Paper towels
*Duck tape (craft stores have tons of different kinds)
*Cardstock
*Letter stickers
*Scissors

First, you’re going to want to dump the rice into your gallon sized bag. Add the rubbing alcohol and your desired food coloring (this color came from 2 drops of blue and 2 drops of green). Mix around the rice in the bag until it’s all mixed up. Dump the rice onto a few layers of paper towels and spread it out as much as you can. Let it dry for 15-30 minutes.

While you’re waiting for it to dry, get your letters ready. I had no intention of having D place the letters on – I honestly thought he’d rather watch TV. But he wanted to help me. So I had him place the letters onto the paper while we talked about each letter. It’s a great fine motor activity, too 🙂

My OCD’s were going nuts because they weren’t placed perfectly in lines on the paper, but he had fun with it. Next, I cut out each letter in a square around it and we took the other letter (the pack of letters had 2 each) and placed it on the back. Again, chatting about each letter and words that we associate with it. After we cut them out, this is what we had.

For whatever reason, D could not keep his hands off of these! When he found out they were going into a bag, he was not too happy.

I had him place them into the bag and he LOVED that. As you’ll learn throughout this blog, I love sensory activities – A LOT. So when I saw that he loved the pressure of putting them into the bag of rice, I made a note in my blog notes (NERD) to make a rice bucket when the weather starts to get colder (WAAAHHHH) for an indoor activity. He would put a letter in the bag and push and get a little feel for the rice. He was loving it.

Close up the bag, remove the white label (comes off super easily with rubbing alcohol on a paper towel) and tape it up with duct tape all around. He loves to just roll the rice bag around in his hands and find the letters. I try not to make a big deal about it, because every time I make a big deal out of an activity, he wants nothing to do with it. So I just added it to his rotation of toys and I notice that he pulls it out and asks me questions about it.

I am going to make another one with lowercase letters – I also bought some trucks to put in another one that he can search for – say their colors, their names, etc. Happy crafting 🙂