DIY Tools to Create the Alphabet

I love learning stations that get little ones playing around with letter formation.

This activity combines play dough (yay) and letter shapes or symbols. Instead of providing the full alphabet only the trickier letters have been added along with the shapes necessary to create the rest of the alphabet in lower case. This way children are really thinking about the shapes of letters and how they are formed while they’re happily playing.

What you need

1. Download and print a copy of this FREE Make the Alphabet template.
2. Salt dough ingredients: plain flour, salt, water and food colouring (optional)
3. Oven or microwave for drying the dough.
4. Acrylic paint if you’d like to paint them.
5. Children to help make them!

Making Salt Dough

Mix together

• 2 cups of plain flour
• 1 cup of table salt

Gradually add 1 cup of water – you might not need it all. If the recipe is too sticky add flour, if too dry add water.

If you want to add food colouring, divide the dough into smaller balls, add a few drops of different colouring to each ball and knead thoroughly. This is a great activity for little hand muscles and can be quite tiring.

Make snakes from the play dough and create the letters and shapes using the Make the Alphabet template. Make sure to remove the template before cooking.

Cooking the Dough

Oven: lay the shapes on baking paper on an oven tray and bake for 3 hours at 100C (around 200F). Since they’re a little thick, turn them over at the half-way point.

Microwave: lay them flat and cook on medium-high for 2 mins. Turn them over and cook for another 2 mins. If still wet, turn and cook again, doing 30 seconds at a time while checking for ‘scorch’ marks like my lovely sample below!

Painting the Dough

If you happen to over-cook your shapes, do what I did and cover them with acrylic paint. That gives your kids one more fun job before they’ve even really learned what the activity is about!

Making the Alphabet

When the shapes are cool and dry, use them to create letters and words in play dough. There is a free printable children’s play dough recipe here. When not in use, store somewhere nearby so the kids can quickly grab them if they’re in the mood to play again!

I hope you and your little ones have a great time with this Create the Alphabet activity and wish you happy teaching and learning!

Do you have suggestions for ‘beautifying’ these salt dough tools? Please leave a comment!