I remember watching Sesame Street and how important that letter and number of the day thing was and I wanted to incorporate more alphabet teaching into our daily activities.
And then I saw these shaped sugars on dailycandy while i was cooking oatmeal:
Like any sane person I googled how to make them, because I knew I had letter molds (don’t we all?) and letter-shaped sugar with oatmeal would surely count as a great way to introduce letters of the day.
I used one cup sugar (I buy that natural looking stuff so I think the white kind would be more sparkly) and one tablespoon of water. And with natural sugar it truly looked like sand when I mashed or together with a fork.
I was in a rush. The oatmeal was boiling and I had a parade of kids and trucks and animals marching through the kitchen.
Some letters were sacrificed-you really should do them one at a time and not as a whole tray. Press the sugar in the mold, carefully flip it onto parchment and let it rest and dry for one hour plus. I didn’t realize you really should wait. A lot of letters were sacrificed in the process. So this morning was brought to you by the letter v all by itself.
The letters L, O and E followed later in the day with the help of some careful garden spotting and a cool collage app called diptic. I guess alphabet teaching can happen everywhere.
And I went and practiced my sugar letters again after the littles went to bed. (Practice makes almost-perfect. I’m adding this to my repertoire and making a note to try brown sugar next time.)
