Practice Words With A Sparkling Salt Writing Tray

If you have a school-aged child who has sight words or spelling words to practice, trust me on this — make yourself a salt tray! As a mom and teacher, I’ve used these trays with my kiddos both at school and at home and they’re such a fun, sensorial way to practice writing words, printing letters and making marks. This one, a sparkly snow-inspired writing tray is much like our beach-themed writing tray made with a box top, but the size and shape of the tray makes it perfect for writing full words instead of just individual letters.

You Will Need:

• a rectangular tray (ours is about 20 x 45 cm)
• table salt
• glitter and sequins
• your child’s spelling or sight words written on cue cards

Instructions:

Putting the salt tray together couldn’t be easier. Simply shake out enough salt to just barely cover the base of your tray and then generously sprinkle some glitter and sequins on top! Of course you can do without the glitter and sequins if you choose, but they certainly do add interest and a significant wow factor.

With the salt tray ready to go, it’s time to put it to use. You can obviously change things up to best suit your kiddo, but here’s how we usually use ours… First off, my daughter gets out her first sight word cue card and places it just above the tray. She then reads the word aloud, prints it in the salt using her ‘finger pencil’ and says it again once done.

So long as you don’t have too much salt in your tray, the words should show up beautifully!

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Then, keeping the base of the tray on the table, she gently shakes the tray back and forth to erase the word just like magic. Poof — gone!

And with that, it’s time for the next word. Continue the process for each of the spelling or sight words you want to practice.

And that’s it — a super easy and engaging way to practice sight words and spelling words at home. Enjoy!