Wooden Letter Collage

L has been really interested in letters of late - pointing them out on T-shirts, book covers, and cereal boxes - so I wanted to find something out of the ordinary for her to do that would give us an opportunity to talk about the letters she loves. I decided to go with a letter collage using contact paper and wooden letter tiles.  This was a nice activity that satisfied L's desire to talk about letters and was a great sensory activity to boot!

I found two types of wooden letter tiles at Hobby Lobby.  I'd been wondering for some time how I would end up using them, and this was a great way to do so.  I taped contact paper to L's art table, sticky side up, and presented her with a bowl of the tiles.  I also provided some alphabet stickers as well, just to mix things up a bit and give L the opportunity to see letters in many different ways.

L really enjoyed this activity. Not only did we have lots of opportunities to discuss the letters she was seeing, but she also loved the  nice clicking sound the tiles made when they came into contact with the tabletop.  This was such an easy breezy activity that fostered letter recognition and language, and was very satisfying from a sensory standpoint. When she was finished, we just folded the contact paper in half and added it to her growing art gallery. No muss, no fuss and lots of fun!

Sensory Art: Contact Paper Window Collage

While I would argue that all art is a sensory experience in some form or another, a recent project L tackled was the easy breezy contact paper window collage.  It was easy to set up and it supplied several days of collaging fun, while at the same time giving us the delicious tactile goodness that only a big sheet of sticky contact paper can provide.


I started out by taping up a sheet of contact paper to a window, sticky side out.  Then I filled a toy bucket of L's with pieces of torn up crepe paper, lengths of shiny ribbon, and a few leftover pipe cleaner segments. (To see what we did with the rest of the pipe cleaner pieces, click here.)

The really great thing about this activity, from a sensory play perspective, is that each of the collage pieces was a different texture. L spent time exploring the fuzzy pipe cleaners, the silky ribbon, and tearing up the pieces of crunchy crepe paper. And of course, we couldn't resist sticking our hands on that amazing contact paper!

The artist at work!

We ended up leaving the contact paper up on the window for several days. It was fantastic because the entire family (sans the dog, who was none too thrilled to lose his view of the neighborhood) continued to add pieces to the collage.  It was a lovely collaborative family effort. Plus, it looked totally awesome when viewed from the street outside!

When we decided we were ready to view our block once again, we simply took the paper off the window, folded it in half with the sticky part in the middle, and hung it up with the rest of L's artwork.  Easy breezy sensory art!