How do you help your children learn spellings? Here’s a multi-sensory idea to try: we’re making cinnamon and ginger scented salt and using it with our autumn leaf word tree, for learning that looks, smells and feels great!
Ginger and cinnamon salt tray :: how to learn spellings
Adding colour and scent to salt is really easy to do, and once you’ve made some it will last for ages, so you can use it time and time again. To make some we used salt, paint, glitter and spices.
Take a bowl of salt and squirt in some paint (we used poster/tempera paint) and add a sprinkling of glitter. It looks pretty already!
We added in a little ground ginger with the yellow paint, and some cinnamon with the brown paint, to give our salt an extra sensory dimension. Then you just need to stir it all up, until the colour spreads through the salt. {You can do all of this in a plastic bag too if you prefer.} Then spread the salt out on a baking sheet and leave it overnight to dry out.
To help my daughter learn to read the high frequency sight words and learn spellings, we combining our scented salt tray with our autumn leaf word tree.
Using a multi-sensory approach to learning means you can suit any child’s learning style. Children get a deeper understanding as they are coming to the learning through many different ways. Plus it also makes the learning fun – which always makes you remember things more.
How to use a salt tray to learn spellings
Spread out the salt on a baking tray. You only need a shallow layer.
Pick a word to work on. We are taking a leaf from our word tree, which contains our spellings words. As the leaves have a magnet on they back the fix nicely onto the salt tray.
Use a paint brush, pencil or your finger to write out the word in the salt tray. This means every time your child writes a word they can:
see the word, on the leaf
feel the flow of the letters as they write the word through the salt
smell the cinnamon and ginger in the salt, giving an extra sensory boost to the activity
hear the word, as they say it out loud as they write
They’re combining four senses to help them learn the word.
Try writing the word a few times, then turn the leaf over and see if you can write it in the sand without seeing the word.
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What a wonderful inventive way to learn spellings. My 6 year old is struggling with learning his spellings. Will try out some of your ideas to make it more fun for him.
Thank you for sharing 🙂
Love the sensory aspect of this Cathy – realising more and more (through accident have to confess) the power of multi- sensory learning
Hi Alice. Yes, I find it’s so powerful. Both my girls respond better when we’re doing these kind of activities – they’re fun, so the learning is happy, but it sticks in their brain much more too.
Thank you so much Cathy for your wonderful ideas.
God bless you.
I do this but scent the salt with essential oils! The children LOVE it and it’s like aromatherapy. It makes me wonder if, for the rest of their lives they’ll smell lavender and think of the letter they practised that day! 🙂 With very young learners (four and five) I have them practise with their finger instead of a brush so they can also FEEL the texture of the salt. I’ve heard that using a brush takes that element out of it (but encourages correct grip). I just found your site and LOVE it!