Make a rainbow sensory writing tray for colourful, fun invitation to so mark making, practise letter formation, learn sight words and draw pictures! So simple to create and very exciting to use as a literacy learning tool for young kids.

We are almost the whole way through our year of making sensory writing trays! I absolutely love these little creative learning invitations and the kids can’t keep their hands out of them because they feel so lovely too. We have some lovely Spring themed trays to come soon and then I’ll bundle them into a round up post to make them easy to find and browse in one place.

I have always loved the rainbow writing tray that Learning4Kids made and wanted to make our own for the collection!

Rainbow Sensory Writing Tray

To make this rainbow sensory writing tray simply find a tray or shallow box with a low edge. Cut some paper to fit inside and colour stripes in rainbow order until all of the white is covered up, then stick it down to form the base.

Simply pour a very thin layer of fine salt over the top and the tray is ready to use!

I set this out on our play and learning shelves with some other rainbow themed invitations to play and learn (which I shall share here soon!) and left it for them to discover.

They all enjoyed it and “ooooed” when they first found the rainbow colours hiding underneath!

It’s just as fun to use this tray for creating pictures as for writing and mark-making, as the lines look so pretty when they’re revealed. They liked drawing portraits and making patterns. I think replicating this on a much bigger scale will be our next step, so that they can increase the size of their transient art work!

Miss 3 had fun practising her name, making pre-writing patterns (such as zig zags, waves, loops and straight lines) and beginning to write some familiar letters too. She gave the tray a quick shake to resettle the salt and start again each time she wanted to try something new!

We have left this out for free play with our other learning resources. The bigger girls found some gold plastic coins and added those into the mix recently too, which makes it lovely for a rainbow and pot of gold theme! You could count and do simple maths problems with the coins, hide them to discover, use them to trace patterns and more.

What they are learning as they play:

literacy: mark making, pre-writing pattern making, early letter formation, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, name writing,

physical: fine motor skills and coordination, sensory exploration

See all of our SENSORY WRITING TRAYS here

Browse the EARLY LITERACY archives for more inspiration!

See our RAINBOW THEMED IDEAS here