Homemade Spinny Speller Tutorial & Giveaway (CLOSED)

~This giveaway is now closed~

I first learned about Spinny Spellers while shopping online in the lovely, but now closed store, Let's Explore. Spinny Spellers are basically blocks on a dowel with letters printed on them. The child spins the blocks around to create basic cvc (consonant-vowel-consonant) words.

Such a fun and simple idea, right? That's what I thought. Then my next thought (as it often is whenever I think about buying something) was - can I make this myself?

I realized I could and after a trip to the craft store I had all the materials I needed to make James a homemade Spinny Speller:

Here's what I bought:
:: Three small 1 inch wooden blocks
:: Two round wooden knobs with pre-drilled holes
:: One 1/4 inch thick wooden dowel

Here's what I did:
I asked my love if he'd very sweetly drill holes into the center of the blocks for me. He, always looking for a good excuse to use his power tools, very sweetly agreed. :) After some trial and error, he finally decided on using the 5/16th drill bit. He also cut the dowel down to 5 inches.

After the holes were drilled, I sanded the blocks to smooth the pointy edges.

Next, I hand painted the blocks using these awesome water soluble crayons.

Then I hand wrote the letters onto the blocks using a permanent marker. I researched common cvc words and decided on the following letters:

::block one: b, c, h, m
::block two: a, e, o, u
::block three: d, g, p, t

This makes quite a few "real" words and several "nonsense" words as well. For us, the point of the Spinny Speller is really just to teach James how to connect the sounds of letters and to realize that in doing this a word is created. Once he gets the hang of that the Spinny Speller will be used as a fun and easy reading tool.

Finally, after the blocks were painted and printed on, I slid them onto the dowel and capped each end of the dowel with a bit of glue and the round wooden knobs.

And that was it! Easy-peasy!!


Of course while I was making this I thought of all you lovely mamas and teachers and decided to make an extra one to give away to one of you! And, as it happens, I have materials still left over after making two Spinny Spellers and I think I'll be whipping up a couple more for birthday gifts as well. :)

So. If you're interested in winning one of my Spinny Spellers (which I'll send in one of my handmade gift bags), please do the following:

:: Leave a comment letting me know what is your child's favorite learning tool. (This could include art and music materials. I'm always looking for interesting things to use with James and I think this could be a great way to share our ideas with one another!)
:: Follow Counting Coconuts and leave me a separate comment letting me know you're following.
:: Blog about this giveaway and leave a separate comment letting me know you've blogged about it.

The giveaway will end at 11pm (Atlantic Time) on Friday, June 4th and Mr. James will randomly choose a winner the following morning. This giveaway is open to everyone - I'll ship anywhere in the world. :)