Gingerbread Alphabet

We just finished up a fun week of Gingerbread activities. This was our alphabet activity. I got this idea from here: http://www.pre-kpages.com/gingerbread/. She had a free download of the pages, but it only had letters A-F, so I quickly made some of my own. You can download them here.

To prep this activity, I created the pages, printed them, then laminated pages and letters so they will hold up from year to year.

For my older children (4 and 6), I simply gave the child all of the gingerbread men pages and all of the letters (upper and lowercase) at the same time and told them to match them up. They put the upper and lowercase letters on the same man. This is something that helps them work on letter recognition and keeps them occupied for a good chunk of time. They don't need any assistance from you.

For my 2.5 year old, we did things differently. We did one sheet at a time. I gave her the upper and lowercase letters for the letters on that sheet. She could do the uppercase all by herself, so if you want a younger child to do this activity independently, you might want to just do uppercase letters. She needed help with the lowercase letters.

The way I helped her understand grouping the letters together even if they looked different is I told her the man on the page is the "daddy letter," the uppercase letter was the "mommy letter," and the lowercase letter was a "baby letter." This worked for her because she is obsessed with babies. It helped her grasp that the letters can go together even if they don't look the exact same.

I had her hold a letter up and tell me what letter it was, then match it. She could get all uppercase, and knew some lowercase, but didn't know them all. It was a great exercise in getting her to think about lowercase letters.

For younger toddlers, I would recommend doing just uppercase. For a pre-toddler or baby, you might hold the letter up and say what it is and then put it on the page or have your child put it on the page if possible.

Pudding Sensory Bags

Ignore my shadow, please. :)

An easy way to practice writing and drawing shapes, letters, lines, numbers, and more!!

Working on addition? Give them a problem and let them draw the answer!

Call out a word and have them write the beginning, ending, or entire word!

Call out shape attributes and have them draw the answer (I'm thinking of a shape that has 3 sides and 3 angles).

Supplies: pudding (I used already prepared snack packs), zip lock or other zip closed bag.

Put the pudding in the bag, flatten the air out, and you are ready to go!

My daughter used a Q-Tip (her idea) for easy writing...and she was right! It's even easier that way. :)

Have fun...and don't forget to save one for snacking. :)

Word Families

So, your child knows all of his/her letters and the sounds they make. Now what? Now it's time to make some words!

For some words, for example said, the, is and love, you might want to try learning those as "sight words." In other words, helping them learn the word just by looking at it, rather than using rules/clues/phonics to figure it out.

Then there are those words that they can "sound out": take each letter, make the sound, blend together. That's one approach.

I like to mix it---take what they know, add some "rules" and help them take the word by chunks, rather than sound by sound.

A great use for a baking sheet and those magnetic letters (that you hopefully have organized now, right?) is making those chunks, or word families.

I usually start with the -at family/chunk. Take -at. Sound it out. Read it, read it, read it. Use your finger to scan left to right. Have them say it with you. Then talk about rhyming words. Remind them to make real words, as little ones like to make rhyming words like dat, yat, and wat. Arrange your letters like the above picture. Make each sound together with the letters on the bottom. Here's how our conversation would go:

Me: What are these two letters at the top here (pointing to -a, -t)?

Her: A and T.

Me: What sound does this make (pointing to a)?

Her: (short a sound)

Me: How about this one?

Her: /t/

me: Good! Now let's put that together. (Scanning with my finger from left to right). Say it with me. "aaa-ttt"

Her: -at (in unison)

Me: Good. Let's do that again. (repeat) What's this letter? (Pointing to 'c')

Her: C.

Me: What sound does that make?

Her: /k/

Me: Good. What happens when I put this at the front of our -at chunk? Can you blend that together?

Her: /k/-at.

Me: Again, a little fast this time.

Her: /k/-at. /k/ at. Cat!

Me: Great! Let's try this letter (and repeat for each letter).

Once you've done that, try mixing it up. You put a letter at the beginning, and with less help this time, let them problem solve. Remember, the idea is to recognize -at as a chunk, not as individual sounds. So it should be: c -at, not c-a-t.

Then you can have them make their own -at words, manipulating the letters themselves.

For a challenge, you can add blends to the beginning, like fl-, th-, br-, etc.

The next step could be to print/make pictures of a cat, bat, hat, mat, rat (etc) and write the word on a card, having them match the card with the words.

Storage: Magnetic Letters

I used to have the HARDEST time keeping up with all those miniature things you use to help teach the kiddos...you know, all the things you use to practice sorting, counting, moving, stacking, and patterning. Magnetic letters were especially painful because I could only seem to find the b when I needed a p. Or I was always one letter short of exactly what I needed.
Thank you, super cheap plastic sewing organizer. I labeled each compartment w/ the correct letter, sorted, and ta-da! No more searching for 30 minutes for a 5 minute activity.
So, how about you? How do you organize all those tiny pieces?

Crepe Paper Letters

This last week was Brayden's birthday. My Mom was over helping Brayden decorate for his party (he loves to put 2 foot sections of crepe paper all over the house). She put this giant letter "B" on the window. I thought that was fun, but didn't think much more of it.

I left it up, and started noticing how enthralled McKenna was with the giant letters on our window. It struck me that this is a great idea for something fun and different when teaching a specific letter! So if you do a letter of the day/week/month/whatever, you could put a large letter out of crepe paper up. 

It is fun and interesting because it is different. It is attention getting. I think this is especially effective for the two year old who is very interested in letters and just learning to identify them. McKenna talks about these large letters every time she sees them. 

Capital and Lower Case Sort

Have you ever been out and about with your child(ren) and noticed that letters you thought they knew, they were unable to recognize on signs, books, and other places? Most of the time when we are teaching our kids letters, they learn to recognize the letters in something close to Times New Roman font. When presented with other forms of the letters, like other fonts, they hit a road block.

This activity is easy to do, and a great way to practice recognition of letters in multiple forms. Just open whatever type of Word program you have (or something of the like) and type a letter about 10 times for capital and 10 times for lower case. Then change the font for 9 of them and ta-da!

I cut them out and had the girls sort them, then glue. Check to make sure they are getting it before they glue, FYI.

Once they get the concept, it's something you can have them do independently. For me, it's something they can do while I work with another sibling with minimal interruptions.

My Name is...

When we started working on spelling and writing my oldest daughter's name (and currently learning to recognize the letters in my middle's name), we tried an activity that we used to start the year with when I taught Kindergarten.

You also get the benefit of teaching glue skills ("a tiny dot, not a big splot" is what I tell her). Fun! (Note the slight sarcasm. Gluing can be very frustrating, so if you aren't up for it, I recommend a glue stick. Or glue in a lid and a cotton swab.)

I demonstrate first, and then let her go for it.

Write out their name as it should look on paper, twice. Cut up one of the names so they have blocks to glue. Demonstrate gluing and checking order of letters. I had her do it first without glue. Then I mixed up the letters and let her try it again. Once I saw that she had that part down, we moved on to gluing. She knows how to spell her name, but gets 2 of the letters mixed up. Gluing she loooooved, so this was fun practice for her.

For my barely 2 year old, it was a good chance to work on letter recognition and get some one-on-one instruction in another area while my oldest didn't need as much help.

Letter Factory

I'm not usually one to rave about a certain learning DVD...probably because I've come across few that you can really rave about. I heard mom after mom recommend this DVD and reluctantly I watched it. It's a really cute DVD with a super-catchy song. But what really struck me was how much and how quickly my daughters (1 and 3) remembered the letters, what they look like, and the sounds that go with them. It's completely amazing. We've been learning and practicing letters for what seems like forever. I'm constantly trying to find and utilize teachable moments to help facilitate learning for the girls. My youngest loves to learn and can't seem to get enough, even at her young age. My oldest (3.5) would rather daydream and pretend. She literally used to cry when I'd get out the craft supplies.

I wouldn't use this tool alone, but it was certainly worth every penny I paid to add this to our "tool belt." We also have the Word Factory DVD, a great supplement to this DVD.

I'm so thrilled with this DVD I had to share it with you all.

Rr is for Reindeer

We've been covering the letter Rr this week for Charis and Atalie, and since it's reindeer week at our house, we made Rr reindeer. Makes sense right? This was a fun and easy way to review the letter Rr.

Prep: I drew the letter R r on card stock with brown marker. I did not put the empty space in the capital R, allowing for the wiggly eye to serve that purpose. I pre-cut the rectangles for the antlers. That's it!

• I let them color the Rrs in w/ brown marker. You could use brown marker, paint, or glue and shreds of brown paper. I chose marker so it would dry faster. Good practice for staying inside of the lines!
• I again used glue in a small container and a cotton swab to let her glue on the wiggly eye. We had a discussion about why the reindeer only has one eye. Ever notice that projects from kids with a side view of the character produces a product that looks like 2 eyes on one side of the head to us? It's about perspective and what they know to be true about faces; faces have 2 eyes. An explanation of why only one eye is needed would be a great teachable moment here.
• I used Do-A-Dot markers for the red nose, but you could do anything...puff balls, colored in circle, a button, glue w/ glitter, etc.
• We glued on a pre-cut ear (again, only one).
• Then I explained antlers. We talked about what they look like (a comparison to a tree branch is what I used) and how we could use the little rectangles to "build" them on our reindeer.

My preschooler has an aversion to glue and other sticky things on her hands. So I showed her how to use the cotton swab to put glue where she wanted the eye/ear/antlers to be and then sticking the pieces on the paper. That is much cleaner than holding that tiny piece of paper and trying to apply glue without making a mess on your hands.

A week (or more) of Grizzly Bears!

On Friday I posted a synopsis of how I come up with a week of lessons on different topics. This is what I decided to cover/review this week:
Theme: Bears
Vocab word: hibernate
Nursery Rhyme: Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear
Number:5
Color: Brown
Fiction Story: Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Letter/sound: Bb
Math skills covered: counting, sorting, graphing
Gross Motor: Crawling like a bear for Hide-and-seek
Life Skill: manners

Day 1:
We started off the week reading a book, starting with the non-fiction book I'd chosen. (I'd checked out both a fiction and non-fiction book about bears. My fiction choice was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. ) We read the book very slowly, going over each detail. We talked about what they eat, where they live, hibernation, homes, coverings and other physical features, and habits. I taught her the rhyme "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear". We counted to 5.

Following this activity we learned about the letter B. I'd printed off a few different B activities from First School to make it a little easier to start. I let her glue buttons to the B on the first page.

Day 2:

We reread the non-fiction book about Grizzly bears. This time I asked her questions as I read, like "What do bears do when winter comes? Do bears like to be alone?" etc. Then we did another "Bb" paper.
Review rhyme and #5.

Math/Snack: I bought a box of Teddy Grahams and would hand her a small pile. I then asked to her count how many I'd given her. It's great practice to move the bears as they count to keep from counting the same bears over and over. At the end she got to eat a few.




Day 3: Reread non-fiction. Read Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Make the letter B with Do-A-Dot markers.



Math: I printed off a gummy bear graph and she sorted gummy bears by color and then graphed them. (and then eat some, of course!)

We practiced making the letter Bb and making circles, our shape of the week. We then used pre-cut circles to make a bear face, like shown on this site. I just made my own template. Then she sponge painted it brown.

Day 4: Review Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear. Count to 5.

We made bear paws for breakfast. I confess that I know that grizzly bears have 5 toes, but they look better w/ 4 when you bake them. :) So, some have 5 and some have 4. Bear paws: refrigerated biscuit dough, roll into the paw shape, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, bake as directed. Easy!

We made bear ears (headband and taped on construction paper ears) and played hide-and-seek w/ berries and bugs (play food and plastic bugs). She had to walk like a bear and dig for her bugs. This is a great activity to do at night as a family. Her dad really got into it and made a little den for her. The growls and grunts were adorable. Even my 18 month old wore bear ears and played.

Math: Sort teddy grahams into piles of 5, since 5 (the # of claws on a paw) was our number of the week.

Reread Goldilocks and talked about manners.

Day 5: Dad got really into the bear talks, too. So while at work her made her a bear claw (life sized) out of wood. Now when she plays hide-and-seek as a bear, she wears her ears and her claw. :)

Oh, and I made porridge for breakfast. Yum! Both girls cleaned their plates. Charis wanted to go for a walk to let it cool, true to story.

As a review, I printed off a bunch of bear pictures from Google Images and typed in what I needed (bear hibernating, bear catching salmon, bear paw with claws, etc). We made her own bear book with easy to read sentences so she can "read" it on her own.

EX:

Bears have big claws.

Our sentences included things like: Bears eat fish. Bears eat rabbits. Bears eat plants. This is a bear cub. Bears hibernate (one sentence per page).
We made the book out of construction paper and just stapled it together.

Hope that helps! Have fun teaching and learning about bears together! I just wish our zoo had bears...it would have rounded out a good week perfectly!

Sand Letters

There are so many variations to this idea. You can do this in flour, shaving cream, and sand, just to name a few. Since it is summer time (or supposed to be if it ever stops raining), I thought a sand activity would be fun. I have some beach sand in the house I planned on using, but it turned out to be the first sunny day in almost a month, so we headed outside.

SUPPLIES

• 
  
  Sand
• 
  
  Child
• 
  
  Container for sand if inside (like a cookie sheet or baking dish)

ACTIVITY

Have your child write letters in the sand.

For Kaitlyn, my 3 year old, I had her write simple letters like H, I, L, T, E, F--letters that involve only straight lines. She also does well with circles, so I had her do O and Q. She wanted to try some harder letters, and for those I held her hand and helped her make the movement.

For Brayden, my 5 year old, I had him do any letter that came to mind and also had him spell words. He can write all upper and lowercase letters on paper, so this activity in its simple fashion is too easy for him, but writing out simple words was just right. It was an activity to provide variety and texture beyond simply writing on paper all the time.

For McKenna, my 14 month old, I had her just play in the sand and perhaps gain something simply by listening in on her siblings.

Letter Review

A quick and easy way to review letters of the alphabet!

Materials Needed: Foam letters (I got my bathtub set from Target, and I also have a few sets from my teaching days), bucket or bag.


We took turns reaching in the bag, closing our eyes, and pulling out a letter. You have choices on what to say, depending on the skill level of your child. You can ask for the letter name, whether it's capital or lower case, the sound it makes, a word that starts with that letter, or if it's at the beginning/middle/end of the alphabet.

This was great practice for taking turns and to have a quick way to evaluate which letters you need to practice more with your child.

*Foam letters are a great resource for a parent to have! There are so many activities that can be done with them. If you don't have a set, I highly recommend them! They'll continue to be useful, even as your child grows and begins to read and write.

Teaching The Alphabet

When Kaitlyn (now three) was not much older than one year old, my husband was shocked on night to realize she could point to and tell you what each letter of the alphabet was. We had never made a concerted effort to teach her. As best as we can tell, it happened through her simply reading an alphabet book she loved at bed time each night.

Teaching the alphabet to your child is as simple as exposing your child to the alphabet. Here are some ideas for helping you expose your child.

• Alphabet Song: This is a simple one. Sing the alphabet. Over and over. And over again.
• Alphabet Books: Brayden and Kaitlyn have each had a favorite alphabet book that they wore out. Brayden's favorite was The Alphabet Book. There is no shortage of alphabet books out there. You can find them with a variety of items represented or specific to suite a special interest your child has. You child might have a favorite character like Elmo. Elmo has an ABC Book. Once you have the book, the next step is to read it, and read it often.
• Magnetic Letters: You can also get magnetic alphabet letters. There are the classic Magnetic Letters. One of our favorites is the non-traditional LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set. 
• Alphabet Posters: You can also do alphabet posters. You can point to the letter as you say it.
• Letter of the Day: And don't forget the letter of the day! Each week, you can focus on a different letter. Practice writing it, look for items around you that start with it, focus on the sound of it...make it a part of your day! Adjust your focus on the skill level of your child.
• Shows: Leap Frog also has an excellent line of movies that teach the alphabet, phonics, and reading. LeapFrog - Letter Factory is the best one for starting out, but I love all of them. There are also two shows on PBS that I love for learning letters: Word World and Super Why!
• Various Activities: In addition to these basics, you can do all sorts of fun activities to learn the alphabet. We have several ideas for you on this blog under Alphabet.

Learning the alphabet is an important first step toward learning to read. It is probably one of the more simple subjects to teach to your children. Remember repetition, exposure, and fun!

Cupcake Letters

This is a fun and tasty way to teach your children about letters and reading words.

AGE RANGE:
You can do this as soon as you want your child eating cupcakes.

SKILLS TAUGHT:
This activity focuses on letters. You can make it as simple as letter recognition on up to spelling and reading words.

If you want to include your child in making the cupcakes, you can also turn this into a math and baking learning activity.

SUPPLIES:

• Cupcakes (from scratch or from a box)
• Frosting (from scratch or from a can)
• Ability to write letters on the cupcake using frosting. I used a cake decorating tip. If you don't have one, you can try putting frosting in a baggie, cutting one corer, and squeezing it out.

PREP:

• Make cupcakes
• Make frosting if needed
• Write letters on cupcakes

ACTIVITY:
There are lots of possibilities for this activity. For the Baby/Pre-Toddler crowd, you can simply show your child the letter on the cupcake and say the letter along with the sound it makes.

For the Toddlers, you can do the same as for the baby/pre-toddlers, but as your child starts to know the letters, ask her what letter it is. Some toddlers will also be able to tell you the sound of the letter.

For Preschoolers, do the same as above, but quizing the letter and sound it makes. As appropriate, you can make words. Put the C, the A, and the T together and help your child read it. Then remove the T and put an R in its place.

You could also spell your child's name and show him what that looks like.

When learning time is over, eat the cupcake if desired.

Texture Bags

Super easy and fun! Great for babies, toddlers and preschoolers.
Materials:
Double zipper sandwich bag
Hair gel, pudding, applesauce, yogurt, washable paint....basically anything gooey. :)
Glitter (optional)

Activity:
Put 1/4 - 1/2 cup of gel/pudding in a sandwich bag and zip tightly, removing most of the air. Flatten bag so that it's a drawing surface.
Let your child play!

Ideas:
Babies will enjoy just squishing. I have to keep an eye on my baby because she's a fan of chewing on these bags.
Toddlers: Play guess the shape/letter, let them try to draw with their fingers, decorate the bag, make dots and have them count them. Hand prints were a winner with my girls. She even figured out how to do a face print. :)
Preschoolers: Great for practice writing letters and drawing shapes. Bigger bags seemed to be more fun...larger drawing/writing surface. You can also make a letter sound and have them draw the appropriate letter, call out a word and they can try to write the beginning consonant, etc. Be creative!
You can also mix colors of paint for a swirl effect in the bag. It's also a good change to talk about what happens when you mix colors like blue and yellow!
If using pudding, yogurt, applesauce or some kind of food, I would really recommend hanging on to the bag for long. If you choose paint or gel, the bags are good for some time! I keep a few bags stored in my activity cabinet.

Teaching Baby Letters

This idea evolved over a few days. We have these Sassy Counting and Spell Bath Appliques. McKenna (9 months old) likes to play with them during her bath. After bath time, I let her hold on to one as I take her to her room and get her dressed. She has eczema, so I spend at least 15 minutes just on lotioning her after a bath, so I really have to provide her with things to keep her happy and still while I do so. And thus, this activity was born. It can be done anytime, but I think just at each diaper change will give you plenty of practice time.

AGE RANGE
I would start this as soon as baby is old enough to hold on to these letters. Activities are hard with babies because you don't see results as quickly as you do with toddlers, but I promise the day does come when you see the fruit of your labors. This would be appropriate for as long as your child is in diapers, and perhaps at times even beyond that.

SUPPLIES

• Sassy Counting and Spell Bath Appliques (or any letter that is safe for your baby to hold and suck on--you know she will suck)
• Baby
• Parent

ACTIVITY
I am going to assume you are doing this at the changing table, but you can do it anywhere.

1. Choose a letter to store at the changing table/station. Choose a letter your baby can possibly say. For example, most baby start babbling consonants such as "d", "m", and "n"--not "q", "v", or "t". Choose a letter appropriate for your child.
2. Place baby on changing table.
3. Hold up the letter. Let's say you are doing B. Hold the letter so baby can see it and say, "This is a B. The B says "Buh." One of my favorite letter movies--okay, my absolute favorite--LeapFrog: Letter Factory has a catchy tune for what each letter says, "The B says, "buh" the B says, "buh." Every letter makes a sound. The B says, "buh." I sing this song.
4. Then give the letter to your child.
5. As you are changing the diaper, say "Buh-buh-buh" over and over as your child shows interest.
6. Change the letter as desired, but don't think you need to do it often. You can stay on the same letter for as long as your baby shows interest in it.

After two days of doing this, McKenna started to purposefully say the letter sound I was saying. We only did it at diaper changes.

EXTENSION
As your baby grows into a pre-toddler, you can add things like what the letter stands for. "This is a B. The be says 'buh.' Be is for Bear, and Ball, and Brayden."

As your pre-toddler starts to talk more, you can ask her to repeat a word B is for.

As your pre-toddler moves to toddler age, you can give her a few words and ask her which on starts with B. You can also ask her to think of a word that starts with B.

CONCLUSION
This is a simple activity that can both make diaper changes a little easier for you and teach your child about the letters of the alphabet!

Play Foam

Brayden came home from my parent's house one day with a present. It was PlayFoam. After reading the box and learning that it was supposedly no mess, I decided that surely the present was for me! We played with it, and it really is quite clean! It isn't 100% mess free, but it is a lot cleaner than play doh. I really, really like it.

You can use this play foam to make and learn all sorts of things. You can make shapes, learn about colors, and make letters to name a few. For the young artist (or old), you can sculpt animals and other creations.

I will be turing to this more often for practicing making letters than play doh. It is much less of a hassel overall. Not to say don't find value in play doh, I do. But this is cleaner and simpler for something like making letters.

I wanted to share this find with you all! The packaging says it is for ages 3 and up, but I did let Kaitlyn play with it. She is 2.5. Happy sculpting!

Licorice Letters and Shapes

This is a fun activity to do when you are learning or reviewing letters and shapes. The age appropriateness depends on your child. If they can chew gummy candy in small pieces without choking, you can try this. The Pull-N-Peel Twizzlers are softer than most licorice, too. They don't have to be able to manipulate the licorice strings themselves, though practice can help with fine motor skills. Even watching you make shapes or letters and then trying to recognize them will help!





Materials:

*I used Twizzlers Pull-N-Peel. They seem to be very flexible and easy to manipulate.
*Hard surface, like a table or cookie sheet.

Activity:
Pull of strips of the licorice and practice making shapes, letters, or numbers for your child to identify. You can use one long strip for some shapes like ovals and circles. For shapes with corners and sides it may be helpful to break the strips apart or cut them. You can point out sides, corners, and angles when making them. ("Triangles have 3 sides and 3 corners. See the 3 points? Let's count the sides together.") You can also make letters to identify. Eat when finished! :)

Alphabet Puzzle

This is a major hit with both my 4.5 year old and my 2.5 year old. It is great for learning to recognize uppercase and lowercase letters while incorporating fine motor skills.

AGE RANGE
As soon as they are old enough to know and recognize their letters. I got this idea from Preschooler's Busy Book, which is for ages 3-6, but as I said, Kaitlyn does this really well at 2.5.

SUPPLIES

• Index Cards
• Pen/marker
• Scissors

PREP

1. Write a capital letter on the left side of the index card and a lower case letter on the right side of the card.
2. Cut each card in half. Cut in wavy or zig-zag lines. I used my scrap booking scissors.

ACTIVITY

1. Set out sets of letters. To start, I just did about six matches (so 12 cards). As I saw they could handle more, I did more.
2. Have your child find the matches.

HINTS

• If you have an older child who knows letters really well, you might not want to do colored index cards because they can use the colors to help find the matches easier. What I did with Brayden was just set out all red cards together, all yellow cards, etc.
• If you have a child who likes things perfect, do this activity on a table or another hard surface so the two pieces will fit together nicely :)

EXTENSIONS

• If you do them on colored index cards, you can flip them over and do color matching.
• You could also do this with numbers, shapes, mommy and baby animals, etc.

PHOTOS

Letter Recognition

Learning the alphabet is such an exciting accomplishment for kids. Letters and words in the environment are starting to have meaning and children are at one of the beginning stages of learning how to read.

However, sometimes the crossover from the alphabet they learn at home and recognizing those same letters and words in other places can prove difficult for some children.
That's where this activity can help. Have you noticed that more books are published in different fonts? Letters and numbers are presented in many different ways in real life. Not every book is published in "Times New Roman," nor are advertisements, signs, magazines, or websites. Take these examples:

Your child may know the alphabet, but would they recognize the alphabet if it was presented a new way?

Ages: As soon as they begin recognizing letters!

Prep: Print the letters that they are learning in different fonts. I went to my Word program and typed the letter 10 times and then printed it off in 10 different fonts. Print them out as large as possible. I also printed them off in small squares (approximately 24 point font).

Activity: Here are a few activities:

• Hide different letters (in the different fonts) around the house or around the room. Go on a hunt!
• Hide the letters and let them hunt, but this time give clues. Call out the letters as they search. "Find all Ys that you can!" "Can you find a capital T?" "I see a letter that makes the /p/ sound. Can you find it?" "I see a letter that is only made of curvy lines (S,O,C)."
• If you are using the entire alphabet, have them put the alphabet in order after they find the letters.
• Fold a large piece of construction paper in half (or thirds, depending if you want to work with 2 or 3 letters). Have them sort two different letters into piles (for example, M vs. R). Glue on paper according to the letter. You could also have them do the same letter, but sort capital and lower case. This works really well when you are working on letters that are similar, like M and N or P and R.
• Play ABC Relay.
• Play Find the Letter.