She also really enjoys sensory-based play. I wanted to combine these things and get her a set of the Montessori sandpaper letters. But geez they're expensive.
I actually, ON MY OWN (that means NO Pinterest!) came up with two different ways to do these letters.
#1: SANDPAPER AND PAINT CHIPS
Total cost: $1
Total effort: 5/10
I bought a pack of cheap sandpaper at the Dollar Tree ($1). I used my Cricut to cut out upper and lowercase letters (this is why it was so easy). I will say -- this did not work super well. The first page went really well, but then the sand started sticking to the mat and it didn't cut as well. So in hindsight, I would use an old mat so I could throw it away, and I would cut the hardest-to-cut by hand letters first. I ended up having to do G/g, J/j, O/o, T/t and V/v by hand.
Then I picked up 52 paint swatches (I'm so sorry, Lowe's) -- 21 dark blue (for lowercase consonants), 21 light blue (for uppercase consonants), 5 dark red (for lowercase vowels) and 5 light red (for uppercase vowels).
I used a layer of mod podge to glue the sandpaper on. I decided not to do another layer over the top so that the sandpaper would be bumpier. Trim off the paint name and they're done!
#2: STICKERS AND WOODEN SQUARES
Total cost: $9 (using Hobby Lobby sales and 40% coupon)
Total effort: 1/10
I bought a pack of raised glittery stickers, so they'd have some texture, 26 wooden tiles (for uppercase), and 26 round tiles (for lowercase).
Then I stuck them together (do I really need a tutorial for this one?)
However, I did run into a snag. Did you notice the stickers are missing a few letters? Yeah, weirdly, this set didn't include capitals of about 6 letters and a lowercase "q". See how I faked it?
