Fabulous Fused Glass Tutorial: Pattern Bars

Fused glass pattern bars are a great way to really personalize your work. Even if you repeat the recipe each one will be slightly different and more one of a kind. I like that in glass work. It’s so easy for a lot of glass fusings to begin to look alike. So I found this great tutorial on how to make fused glass pattern bars and then fuse them together. There is no one way to make pattern bars but this one is a good place to start if you haven’t done it before. I found it on the web site Clear Water Glass Studio. Such amazing glass work!! The artist whose site it is, is Steve Immerman. Read more about him.

And when you’re done checking out the site look at the tutorial. The possibilities are endless with what can be done. What are your favorite colors? What’s the feeling you want to create? You can take the resulting bars and cut the slices and use them for another fused piece or use the slices as tiles for a mosaic or tiles in a bathroom. How about jewelry? They can be set in silver or metal clay or drill a hole, add a jump ring and there’s a pendant. If you try this I’d love to see what you do. Send pictures. It’s such a cool project!

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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