Alphabet Jelly Stamps (an Activity to practice Letter recognition)

Jump to recipe

These jelly prints are a great way to help kids when learning to recognize letters.

When kids can touch things with their hands, they can make more sense of how things formed. So that’s why when learning letters I love to make sensory activities!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alexa Torrijos (@kidactivitieswithalexa)

Materials needed

• Unflavored gelatin (I love to use Knox gelatin packs – Amazon)
• Letter Shape silicone mold (Alphabet silicone molds – Amazon)
• washable paint
• Cardstock or mixed media paper
• paint brushes
• washable paint

How to Make Jelly Stamps

To make the jelly letters you need the letter silicone mold and gelatine packs.

• Mix 5 packages of unflavored gelatin with 1/3 cup of cold water.
• Mix in 1 cup of hot water and mix well.
• Spray the silicone mold with nonstick oil.

• Place your mold in the refrigerator overnight.
• Unmold and place it on a tray.
• Use washable paint to paint over the letters and place a piece of paper over it. tap gently three times and open! reveal your design.

Explore the different sides of the letter to create different stamp designs.

The goal of this activity is to allow your kids to feel, touch, and have a hands-on experience with the letters.

How to Make Jelly Plate

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alexa Torrijos (@kidactivitieswithalexa)

To make the jelly plate mix 5 packages of unflavored gelatin with 1/3 cup of cold water.

Mix in 1 cup of hot water and mix well.

Spray a round mold (I used an old dog bowl) with nonstick oil.

Add in your mixture and refrigerate overnight – or leave out on a counter to harden.

Unmold and place it on a tray. You can repeat this process with letter shape mold (I have this one from Amazon).

Using washable paint, cover the plate with paint.

Use a Q-Tip to make designs

Place a Paper over it to transfer the design

I place just a few drops of washable paint in our pallet and added the jelly plate inside a shallow tray.

We made a few imprints and then decided to use Q-tips to make our own designs and expedient transferring those to the paper.

This activity with the Q-tips is a great activity to work on his finger muscles to, later on, be able to hold a pencil. We are working on pre-writing skills in a fun way!

As you may know, a child’s hand doesn’t develop fully until about 6 or 7 years old, so asking a toddler or preschooler to hold a pencil and wrote letters is just not developmentally appropriate. Instead, we do lots of activities and art that will give him the foundation to strengthen his muscles for when his hand develops he is ready to write.

After about 20 imprints we did mixing different colors on the jelly plate it was time to experiment with the letter.

The same process applied, we painted the letters that we created using the letter mold and mixed different colors.

I chose red, blue mostly so that when he mixed the color he would get a few shades of purple.

If you provide all colors at the same time (yellow, blue, and red) when they get mixed it will turn into brown.

Start by picking 2 primary colors and let the mix of those create a third color.

we press the paper over them and “tap, tap, tap” to transfer the paint to the paper.

We gently lifted the paper and like magic! We had created a letter imprint! It was so much fun to see his amazement to see the letters transferred!

note: The letters transferred backward because when you do the imprint the image is mirrored, so to do stamps you will need to flip the letters the opposite way so the print would stamp correctly.

because it was all about playing with the letters, touching them, seeing how they were formed and constantly naming them I let him do the imprints seeing the letter in the right form and the imprint to be “backward’.

for me, it was more important that the for familiar with the letter than the final product of the art piece.

When we were done, I did do a few backward imprints in order to save those for our book and we could recall our activity. This time him seeing the letters the right way.

this way, he would connect the activity we did hands-on with the letters he sees on the paper.

Print This Recipe

Recipe not found

Just remember to have fun with it, is about the process and not the end result! Have told of paper handy! This is an activity that can last a long time but you need to make sure you have the paint ready and to make different mixtures and lots of paper to make prints.