Just like our other sensory alphabet cards, your child can make this set alongside you. In this activity, we are making some pipe cleaner letter cards. These are easy to make and your child will love to make them getting the pipe cleaners all bent out of shape! So here goes How to Make your Own Pipe Cleaner Letters for supporting your child as they learn to read and write.
Materials Needed for Pipe Cleaner Alphabet for Kids to Make
Letter Template Cards -> Download here
Printer
Pipe Cleaners (any choice of colour or colours)
Pom poms (to dot your i, j)
How to make your Pipe Cleaner Letters
- Print out the letter template cards onto the strongest card that your printer will handle.
- Starting in the place you would start a letter when writing, bend your pipe cleaner over the letter template. See our video for when lines in a letter overlap.
- Carefully, use the glue gun (always under adult supervision) to glue the letter joints together.
- Continue to use the glue gun to glue the pipe cleaners securely to the letter templates.
- Leave aside to dry.
Using and Extending your Sensory Pipe Cleaner Letters to Make with your Child
You may want to add a dot and arrows around the letter to show the direction that a pen would move to form the letters. Although that isn’t essential, as you could just use the letters to make a nice visual representation of the letters that they are learning each week in their phonics programme.
As you work with the letters, don’t forget to use both the letter name (as you would sing the alphabet or spell a word out to an adult) and the letter sound that they will be using as they will be doing learning to read.
You could finish it off by getting them to ‘air write’ the letter, use their finger to draw it in the ground, draw it in sand, paint it, write the letter on paper or a whiteboard copying – the way that they traced the letter on the sensory letter card.