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When our eldest started showing an interest in letters we seized the opportunity to gently encourage letter recognition and lowercase sounds through a variety of playful activities. Although I appreciate she is going to be learning phonics from a professional when she starts reception this year (cue the uncontrollable sobbing coming from the grown adult!) we didn't want to simply ignore her interest. There are endless opportunities to incorporate it in play, but below I have documented some of ways we have experimented at home. Hopefully, you will find some of them useful for your child(ren).
Understandably, recognising letters is a fundamental part of learning how to read. So, on our journey to help Big Bee learn the alphabet in general we first started with teaching her the letters of her name, because we knew that would hold a lot of value for her. This then lead onto her wanting to know the letters in her brother's name, mine and her daddy's. As mentioned in the blog post 'THE BEST WAYS TO PREPARE YOUR CHILD FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL - INTERVIEW WITH TEACHER, LUCY OLDMAN' - "By the time a child starts in Reception I would expect the majority of children to be recognising their name and be able to make some attempts at writing it." Naturally, we have then introduced the other letters in the alphabet.
We have focused out attention on the lower case letters because most letters in written words are lowercase, not uppercase, and therefore the visual recognition of lowercase letters will be more useful. However, we have taught her to recognise the uppercase for the first letter in her name.
With the different letter activities we have done my main emphasis has been on making it enjoyable through play and exploration. It's all on her terms, because learning HAS to be fun! So, here is what we have been up to:
Object hunt - A game focusing on the sounds of lowercase letters, and involves finding different items from their toy collection/around the house that begin with a chosen letter. For example, 't' for train, tiger, troll, toast, tomato.
Hunting for letters beginning with s, d and c
Letters in the everyday - Encouraging your child to spot different letters on containers, packaging, boxes, road signs, shop fronts, car number plates for example. You could also adapt a game of I-spy to be about letters when on a walk.
Roll and dab - I stuck white stickers and wrote the letters that we were focusing on onto each side of the dice. I then wrote these letters randomly on a piece of cereal cardboard. Big Bee then had to roll the dice, find the matching letter, and mark it with the paint.
Rolling the dice and then finding the letter to dab with paint
Mark making - Using a tray filled with either salt, flour, sand or shaving foam your child can practise making letters with their index finger. A great one for developing fine motor skills and getting a little messy. Alternatively, you could mark out letters and they have to rub out the letters (you could use a paintbrush if you have one to hand) that you give the sounds for, or that they have to recognise from a flashcard, magnetic/foam/resin letter.
Alphabet post box - This was a big hit with both Bees! Using a recycled tub or cardboard box, cut a hole in the lid and add a simple decoration on the outside if you wish. Then by either making the letter sounds or presenting a letter on a flashcard, they have to find the matching letter and post it in the post box.
Letter posting
Matching up - A simple activity of matching the magnet/foam letters to the letters on the paper. If you felt that your child was able to, you could also do this where they match the lowercase letter to the uppercase letter. I have created a free simple letter matching sheet that you can print off to use (as shown in the image below), which can be found in the Resource Library. In the document is also a sheet with letters in hives, and on the next sheet are some bees that you can cut out and place on the hive when you have found the letter.
Lucky dip and stick - With the magnetic, foam or resin letters in a box or sack your child can pull out a letter. They then have to find this letter on a piece of paper/card with all the letters of the alphabet on and cover it with a sticker.
Matching letters up
Puzzles - We have an alphabet Melissa and Doug puzzle that we bought where you have to match up the letters to a picture of something beginning with that letter. Although there are a couple of American objects, I like how both the lowercase and uppercase letters are shown (for when that becomes relevant) and it's nice to have a different resource to add variety.
Bee and hive activity - You can print off the 'Letter Matching' document in the Resource Library and on page 2-3 (titled Letter Recognition) you will see some hives with a-z written on each one, and a page of bees that need to be cut out. You can then make the letter sounds of each letter e.g. ah for Annie Apple, b for Bouncing Ben, k for Clever Cat, and when your child matches the sound to the correct letter then they place a bee on the hive. Can they fill all of the letter hives?
Books - Books are a wonderful tool for pretty much everything and there are lots on the market for introducing the alphabet. We have an old version of 'ABC Letterland' that I picked up at a jumble sale and I remember reading it when I was a child - A for Annie Apple, B for Bouncing Ben, C for Clever Cat and so on. Needless to say Big Bee is a big fan of it and the colourful illustrations are beautiful and captivating. Not only this, but if you read to your children day-to-day they will come to recognise that the print in the story contains letters, and you can begin to point out certain letters that you may have been learning about that day.
Alphabet puzzles
Playdoh smash - If your children love Play-doh as much as mine do then this will no doubt go down well with your little ones. You just need something to smash the Play-doh e.g. a wooden mallet. We then put balls of Play-doh next to different letter magnets and Big Bee had to either smash the correct ball based on the letter sound I made, or if recognising a letter when I showed it to her on a flashcard.
Letter tracing - You can either write out the letters on paper, or mark them out with masking tape on the floor and have your child follow the shape of the letters with anything for example, pom poms, buttons, beads, gems or conkers.
Tracing letters with buttons
Bubble wrap popping - Using a black marker pen write the letters on the bubble wrap, and once they have found the letter that they need to find they then pop the bubble. We found that the bigger the bubble wrap, the more fun!
Sounds of fruit and vegetables - Something a little different - Big Bee had to find the piece of fruit or vegetable that I had made the first letter sound for. We then matched the correct foam letter to each. It was a great opportunity to talk about each vegetable and fruit too, and how they are good for us.
Spotting the 'b' for butternut squash
Dot stickers - A fun game of find and stick. Write some letters on a piece of paper or card, and then the same letters on numerous dot stickers. Your child then has to peel off the stickers and match them to the same letter. A good activity when teaching your child the letters in their name and for fine motor development.
'Splat' - We placed foam letters on the grass in the garden and we played two versions of this game.
1) Big Bee had to 'splat' (with the fly swat) the letters of the sounds that I was making.
2) She had to do a lucky dip and pull out a foam letter from a bag and then find the matching letter on the grass and 'splat' it.
These foam letters are also great fun to play with in the bath.
Letter 'splat'
Counters - Big Bee is a fan of technology, so I decided to make her some different pages with items beginning with each letter of the alphabet mixed with some items that didn't begin with that letter. She had to then use our counters and place them on the items that began with the letter by sounding out the words. She really enjoyed this activity and became more confident as it went on. I have uploaded the document for all 26 letters of the alphabet onto the Resource Library for subscribers to access for free.
Paint tracing - Draw a letter on a piece of paper and then using a paint dabber your child can trace it with a paint dabber. This will encourage recognition and fine motor skills.
Placing counters on the items beginning with 't'
Salt painting - Using some PVA glue you can write lowercase letters and something beginning with that letter on cardboard. Then sprinkle some table salt over it and leave it to dry. Liquid watercolours are best for this, but we didn't have any so we just had to make sure that we used enough water with our palette watercolours. Make sure to gently apply the colour to the salt and watch it spread. You could also use pipettes and food colouring/water mix. A fun and different medium to paint on.
Letter salt painting
Magnetic sensory bin - Create a sensory bin with anything from rice, sand to cereals in it and scattered magnetic letters in it to fish out with a fishing rod. You could use a chalkboard for them to match the letters in a word like in the image below, or you could use flashcards for individual letters or all the letters in the alphabet written out. Alternatively, they might have to match lowercase letters with uppercase letters (if you are at that stage). There are many different options to explore!
Magnetic letter fishing
Play-doh stamping - We used our homemade Play-doh for this activity as we found it smoother to imprint, and after finding that our letter stamps didn't leave very good marks we opted for our magnets instead. Big Bee would ask for words she wanted and then copy the letters onto the Play-doh.
Play-doh stamping
Alphablocks - A children's TV programme on BBC iplayer under the 'Love to Learn' section. Described as "a show that’s helped millions of children learn to read through adventures, songs and laughter. It’s a ton of fun with letters and words – all built on a firm foundation of key phonics skills".
Letter treasure hunt - Hide some foam letters around the garden or a room in your house, and let your child go on the hunt to find them and sound out the letter when they have found it.
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