Letter J Activity: Jellybean Stain

This Letter J activity was experiment. When I taught preschool we always glued jellybeans onto the letter J. Of course, I wanted to see if I could mix this letter of the week activity up a bit. Have you ever been eating jellybeans, and found your hands stained with jelly bean color? I wondered what would happen if we dipped the jellybeans in water and then painted with them. Fun right?!?

such a fun letter j activity - jellybean art!

Letter J Activity: Jellybean Art

What you need: Letter J construction paper, glue, jelly beans and a small bowl of water.

To prepare the Letter J Activity; print out the Letter J, glue it on a piece of construction paper and write the word Jellybean on the bottom of the paper. Set out a bowl with jelly beans (don’t put more than you want your little one to eat. . .they will get eaten). Work together to drip water over the jelly beans.

Once the jelly beans were a little wet, I told M and M to get busy painting.  It worked almost as well as I’d hoped. There seemed to be a lot more eating than painting going on. Hmmm….

Tips (to maximize learning): Before you get started ask a question and make predictions. “What do you think will happen when the jellybeans get wet?” After the activity talk about what things happened that you expected. What were you surprised about?

Tips (for successful jellybean stain): The key is to use the perfect amount of water. Too much will rip the paper, too little will not leave a stain. Have fun experimenting!

Have some messy Jello fun along with this activity for even more Letter J practice.

Start prepping for next week by checking out our Letter K activity or any of the Letter of the Week Activities.

This post originally appeared on March 12, 2011.

10 Comments

    1. Yeah, I’m so glad to hear that! And glad to have you here. Little M did eat every jellybean, but I got her to paint a bit with them first. When we used to glue them it was a big deal. . . don’t want little ones eating glue. But with just water she was able to do the project and eat the candy.

    1. Last year we used fruit loops to decorate a rainbow. M and M have been begging me to do it again. Jelly beans on a rainbow would be really fun too. Great sorting practice.

    1. I actually refrained from tasting those delicious little candies, but if I’d been painting with them I don’t think I would have been able to resist.

  1. Awe, such a great idea! I will have to check out the other letters because I need some great new ABC ideas for my preschooler. The water stain would never meet the letter J in my house. The beans would be gone before I got the water 🙂

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