Make a candy cane sensory writing tray for learning sight words, letters, numbers and more! A wonderful Christmas themed literacy activity for younger kids to learn in a fun way.
Here we are with another Sensory Writing Tray! We have over a whole year’s worth of these which are themed according to topics, interests and seasons! These sensory writing trays engage young children with literacy in such a fun way and take the boring out of spelling practise, name learning and more. You can even use them to do maths homework! Who says it needs to be done with pencil and paper anyway?
Like with our previous creations, with this candy cane sensory writing tray I used a shallow serving tray and added fine white salt as a base. This time I also added red glitter as the contrasting colour and carefully alternated both to make stripes. You don’t need more than a thin layer otherwise the underneath will not show through as they write.
Then we decorated with real candy canes and little felt holly decorations. I wrote some sight words onto candy cane shaped pieces of red paper and finished those off with white stripes using a thin Posca paint pen.
The whole set up took 10 minutes to create and the girls loved discovering it after school. They are all at different stages of learning, from initial phonemes to sight words and finally onto really tricky words with my eldest.
Practising in this hands on and fun way is so good for the brain as it is a kinaesthetic approach and really enjoyable too. 
They used the candy cane as their writing implement (we like to shake it up with fun writing tools each time!) and this really made them chuckle.
It was great for making marks in the glitter and salt too, and the shiny gold base of the tray showed through really well.
We’ve made a video for you to see the writing tray in action! Watch it here.
You could also use this candy cane sensory writing tray to answer some mental maths question which you can call out to your child, to draw pictures in or practise handwriting patterns too.
It’s sure to be an attractive and exciting prospect when placed on the writing table in the classroom, or used in a special focus support group too.
See our full range of Sensory Writing Trays here!
If you loved this you should browse the Playful Literacy archives as they are bursting with ideas to engage young minds in literacy learning fun!
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I can’t wait to use this next week in the classroom. I had plan to use just salt but glitter will be fun or dyed red salt. I love your ideas.