Learning letters is the first step in learning to read. Children in preschool and kindergarten largely focus on letter identification and letter sounds.
While some kids are naturally inclined to learn letters from a young age, others take longer and that's okay.
My mission is to making learning letters and how to read fun and hands on. So if you're looking for a letter sounds worksheet or some alphabet flashcards, this isn't the place.
Instead I'm going to show you my most favorite, hands-on letter learning games so that your kid is just as excited about the alphabet as I am (that's super excited...ahem...kindergarten teacher).
There is not one correct order of teaching letters but instead many different ways to choose which letters to focus on first.
No matter what order of teaching letters you choose, I would recommend only working on 5-7 new letters at a time to avoid overwhelming your child. They'll need lots of repetition for those letters to stick in their minds, so always add in some letters they already know when you're playing these games.
All you need are some Post-its, a fly swatter (or a hand), and you're ready to go. Call out letter names or letter sounds and have your little one jump and swat the letters. You can use numbers too!
Hide toys around the house or even just on a door with blue tape. Invite your child to play by telling them that the Toy Thief has stolen their precious toys and they, and they alone must rescue them.
At the rescue station, toys must be matched with their beginning sound, reinforcing the letter sounds while also working on phonemic awareness!
Got salad tongs? Blue tape? Any container? Combine with letters for this fun challenge!
It's simple, really...call out the letter sound and have your child pluck the corresponding letter from the container below, maneuvering through the blue tape.
It's a wonderful chance to practice fine motor skills as well!
Active kids don't like to sit to learn. Try Letter Sounds Stomp to get your child smashing their way to all their letters and sounds.
Got some tricky letters that continue to confuse your child? Pick out those 5 or so letters they're learning and place them on Post-its for this surprising little game that kids love!
Much like my very viral Pinterest post for teaching Sight Words, you can place letters on Post-its, lining them up with a muffin pan.
Throw the poms poms at the muffin pan and yell the letter name and sound! Kids and adults love this hands-on learning game that happens to also improve your aim.
Loving learning letters yet?
Pick out those target letters your child is working on and write them separately on a piece of construction paper. Hide 4 Post-it notes of the same letter around your home and have your child seek out those Post-its.
As your child matches the Post-it letter to the matching construction paper letter, they say the matching letter sounds!
Surprise! Your favorite stuffed animal is going on a trip, but you need to pack some intriguing objects for it!
Place different letters in a bag. Take turns pulling out different letters and searching around the house that you can pack that begin with that letter sound.
Place the item with the letter and pack them for Bear's trip! Bon Voyage!
Learn letter sounds as Bear packs for a trip!
In this creative game, kids rescue their toys from under a laundry basket, unlocking the "code" by writing the letters that match the beginning sounds for each item. Genius!
Got some blue painters tape? Create some zig zags for your child to traverse. Along the way, place some Post-it notes with letters they're learning on it.
Give your child a way they must cross the path: tip toe, jump, hop on one leg, walk, skip.
Each time they come to a letter, they need to stop, name it, and say it's letter sound.
Do your kids love trains and cars? They can even use their vehicles to traverse the zig zag path encountering letters as train stations or stop lights.
Take the fun outside with some chalk and play this silly, active hands-on learning game from The Imagination Tree. Draw letters on the ground and have children jump on the letters you name!
Grab those plastic Easter eggs and get ready for the most epic letter learning experience. Match the letters in the eggs to the mat, and we even added a secret ingredient! WOW!
Practice matching letters with lowercase and capitals in this sensory soup bin that will keep even toddlers engaged!
The newest addition to this list is a complete set of alphabet playdough mats. This activity promotes learning letters in 4 different ways and includes sensory, tactile, fine motor, and reading/writing in every single mat.
"Swat It" is a high energy fly swatter game that kids ask to play again and again. Whatever you want to practice with your child, be it number recognition, number sense, math facts, letters, sight words, or reading skills you can do it with this game. All you need is a fly swatter and some Post-its.
Who doesn't love permission to hit something every once in a while? Lot's of parents express worry about their child's low interest in learning numbers and letters and a lack of focus. But the problem, isn't really their child's focus. It's boredom so let's make practicing fun with hands-on learning games.Â
1. Teach Letters or Letter Sounds - For younger kids 2-4, call out a letter name. Wanna up the ante a bit? Call out the letter sound for kids 4+. Here are 12 more epic hands-on games to teach letter sounds.
2. Teach Numbers- For kids in preschool, practice numbers 1-10. For kids in kindergarten use numbers 1-20!
3. Teach word families - I recommend beginning with the AT word family. Grab those flashcards you see in the picture here.
4. Teach sight words - Using a fly swatter is just one of 16 epic ways I teach my kid sight words.
5. Teach number sense- In this game, kids are working on more than just number identification. Call out more difficult math clues to get them really thinking.
6. Combination of numbers and letters - For this we had Big Sis identifying numbers and Lil Sis working on letters!
Be sure to add in some items that your child has already mastered so they won’t get burnt out searching for only ones they don't know. We want kids to have success and fun while exposing them to new numbers, letters, words, etc.
What should I do if they don't know the answer? When my eldest was looking for a number she didn't know, I would call out clues initially like what it was next to or if it was higher or lower. This would help her narrow her focus, preventing visual overwhelm and guide her to find it on her own. After playing a few times, she felt more confident and we did a lightning round.
There is NO way your child won't absolutely love this fly swatter game.
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Kids will be moving and reading in this sight word matching game!
Exposure, exposure, exposure! That’s the key to learning sight words! Sight words are the most common words we come across when reading, but often they don't make sense when "decoded."
To decode, in terms of reading, means to sound out. Kids trip up on words like "of," "has," "is," and "the" but those words are essential for early readers. That's why sight words need to be memorized, so that kids know them instantly and can spend time sounding out the words that make sense phonetically.
In this game, kids will get a ton of exposure to target sight words. You can play with 1 sight word or 10; it's really up to you. Because kids can get overwhelmed easily, I recommend choosing 3-5 sight words as best practice. If you need a suggestion, check out this list of sight words for kindergarten.
I always start with the words I see most in my kids' books. So, I'd recommend: I, a, am, the, is, was, has, of, be, to if you're first starting out.
It's simple. Kids will look for all the Post-its hidden around the home or classroom and return them to the "home base." Then, they'll match the sight word to the correct page.
Sight words are a more advanced reading skill that begins in TK/kindergarten. You can also play this game with letters, numbers, and even shapes and colors. If your child doesn't know their letters and sounds yet, I recommend playing this fun seeking game with letters instead! You can use capitals and lowercase or mix it up!
Our sight word matching game is only one of 16 Hands-on games that I use to make learning sight words fun! So, don't wait and check out these game for more fun sight words activities!
Pom Pom Stick and Count is the BEST activity to practice reading and even writing numbers 1-10. Forget those counting to 10 worksheets and have fun counting with us.
*As an Amazon affiliate, I may get a small commission for purchases made through links in this post.
Grab some Pom Poms and blue painters tape.
Using a door frame, I placed 6-8 strips of tape of sticky side out. I made sure to tape them tightly so they didn't sag across the empty door frame.
I always semi-close the door to prevent pom poms from getting trapped on the other side.
If your preschooler is also practicing writing numbers 1-10 you can add a writing component as well. We created a writing numbers 1-10 worksheet that goes with this activity just for you!
If you are looking for another exciting game to practice numbers 1-10 with your preschooler, you have to check out punch math!
There are so many ways for preschoolers to practice counting with manipulatives, aka tangible objects. When young children are first practicing counting, it is extremely helpful to use manipulatives in order to develop 1-to-1 correspondence and count accurately. That's why counting to 10 worksheets are a hard no for me as a teacher and a mama!
Sensory Lowercase Letters Soup is a game we play where the kids pretend to make soup, but I sneak in some learning.
Learning is so much better when it's organically intertwined with kids' play because it's always fun and goes in new imaginative directions. Each time can be different!
*As an Amazon affiliate I may earn some pennies if you make a purchase through my links at no additional cost to you!
In Lowercase Letters Soup, the egg carton has letters written in each space and I only include those 12 letters in the soup. It is more successful and engaging when every letter they find has a home.
Kids sometimes resist doing an activity that is visually overwhelming or has too many steps. Keeping it to 12 lowercase letters makes the task doable for little kids. Also, the egg carton serves as a reminder of how many other letters are left. The egg carton can even be a math component: noticing there are 12 spots in the egg carton, how many the child has found already, and how many empty spots are left.
Another way to play with the letters, especially if you don't have an egg carton is to match them to letters on a baking tray, like in this great activity by No Time For Flashcards!
Make sure to include some vowels in your letters so that readers can find letters and try to make their own words.
Kids can make CVC words, that means Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words and then read them. Is that a real word? Or is it a nonsense words?
Ready for another activity using these lowercase letters? Try making CVC words in a muffin pan!
Kids who count the wrong number of objects without noticing their mistake have yet to develop the important skill of one to one correspondence.
The definition of one to one correspondence is the knowledge that only one item is to be counted for each number that you say. To put it another way, each item in a group of items is only to be counted once.
Kids learn how to count out loud before they learn how to count quantities. Oftentimes, they're saying the numbers faster than they're registering the actual quantity. So my rule is to tell them to "Touch 1, count 1."
In these one to one correspondence activities with your phone number, your child will delight in matching the quantity of various objects to the numbers before them.
*As an Amazon affiliate, I may get a small commission for purchases made through links in this post at no additional cost to you.
Dot stickers are a wonderful tool for developing one to one correspondence because peeling the sticker will slow down your child's counting. As they peel each sticker, they should only count one number more in the sequence.
Is your child having trouble peeling the stickers? Remove the white backing from the page and it'll be MUCH easier!
For beginner counters, try exercises where they have to actually move the objects they're counting. One excellent game that I use to build one to one correspondence with my 2 year old is this.
Moving the objects they're counting will slow down kids' oral counting to match the number of objects. As a result, they will better keep track of what they've already counted.
As children get more confident in counting, they might only touch the object, then point at it, and then ideally for smaller numbers, they'll be able to visually know how many they have quickly in a skill called subitizing. Domino games are great for subitizing!
Want more one to one correspondence practice? If your child likes snack time (who doesn't?), then they'll love this snacktivity aka snack activity.
In an overseas visit to my family, I noticed that my aunt had life size portraits of her grandchildren hanging in her bedroom. I loved how each child decorated their own portrait differently, with no influence from an adult.
In an effort to unite my children with their cousins around the world, I ordered some butcher paper and make our own as an invitation to create for my children while also discussing a delicate topic (skin color) in a way that makes sense to young kids.
*As an Amazon Affiliate I may get a small commission from purchases made through my links at no extra cost to you. It's probably 2 cents, but hey, a penny saved is a penny earned.
We used People Colors from Lakeshore Learning to find the matching skin tone for each kiddo as we drew. Snag your own "People Colors" set from Lakeshore here. (I'm not their affiliate but I LOVE these)
Update in 2021: Crayola now makes people colors and they're called Multicultural Crayons!
Using multicultural crayons is a very natural way to discuss diversity, particularly skin color, with young children. When we first got ours, we read out the names of all the colors in the box: coral, sable, chestnut, maize, peach, ebony, mocha, melon.
We talked about how all the colors of skin are beautiful and important, including the ones we chose for ourselves. Positive Self Talk can improve kids confidence, so don't be afraid to compliment you're own looks and what makes you special. (Here is a great positive self talk activity you can print out for free).
We also discussed that the words "black" and "white" are opposites, but that people really come in all shades of the same color, not opposites at all. When we stop feeling like we are opposite, then we can focus on what we have in common.
We all have hearts; all of us feel joy and sadness; we all like to be a part of a community, to feel like we belong.
Children do notice differences between people, so rather than "shush" them or pretend they don't exist, when a child notices something different about another, we can acknowledge that difference and validate that being different is what makes us special and interesting.
When we bring up the subject of race with kids from an early age, we can teach respect, love, and unity before they reach an age where they feel uncomfortable discussing race or worse, when society has taught them negative stereotypes and biases that will need to be unlearned.
We are all human, and we are all beautiful. It's never too early to teach our children to appreciate the beauty of every color and the people behind the colors as well.
Social emotional learning refers to learning about ourselves and how we fit in with others. By discussing positivity in differences, we are allowing children to ask questions and face biases that they may have already learned.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) lists 5 core competencies:
1. Self-Awareness
2. Social Awareness
3. Responsible Decision-Making
4. Self-Management
5. Relationship Skills
By first discussing our own self as we create life sized portraits, we build children's self-awareness. By discussing the differences between portraits and also the differences among all people we are helping build children's social awareness and relationship skills.
I searched for the perfect DIY Dinosaur Eggs Recipe for ages before I decided to make my own!
I don't know about you, but my little preschoolers are dinosaur lovers. Everything needs to be dinosaur themed: dino eggs, dinosaur chicken nuggets, dinosaur fossils, and Jurassic park theme songs rule my life.
I knew I hit a winner with this really DOABLE dinosaur egg recipe...Dinosaur eggs filled with mini dinosaurs? What more could a kid possibly want? All these activities make for fun, hands on learning experiences with items you likely have around the house.
*As an Amazon affiliate, I may get a small commission for purchases made through links in this post.
Recipe makes 9-10 dinosaur eggs with treasures inside.
Ingredients
You can really put any similar toy inside. I've put fairies, unicorns, gem stones and any small treasures I can find as long as they're safely tucked inside when baking. Always use adult supervision when using the oven!
Once I'd gotten the DIY dinosaur eggs just right, I made a little nest of twigs and branches in the yard and surrounded the nest with the parent dinosaurs.
Calling the kids to come outside, I urged them, "These dinosaurs need your help. Their eggs are about to hatch, but someone has stolen them and now they're all lost. Can you find all the dinosaurs, bring them back to their parents' nest, and help the eggs hatch to reveal what is inside?"
To break the eggs you can use anything: mallets, hammers, or even throw them on the ground. Remember to practice safe tool use (we used plastic tools) under parent supervision.
If your child is younger and having a harder time cracking the eggs, dunk them into a little bowl of water. As a result, they'll be a bit softer and easier to break.
There is something so satisfying about watching these baby dinosaurs emerge from the eggs! Truly, I can't stop watching.
Are you ready to try my DIY dinosaur egg recipe? You will not regret it! Looking for more sensory experiences for your little learners, check out these activities.
One of the best ways to practice shape identification is through sorting shapes. Using contact paper to make a sticky wall, you'll have the perfect shape sorting setup!
If you're wondering how to make a sticky wall, you'll want to watch the quick timelapse on this post: Sticky Wall Activities
Before you play, make sure you have sectioned off areas of your sticky wall for each shape. You can do this with tape or like in this photo below, by putting a differently colored paper behind the contact paper.
Then you'll need some shapes. I cut up pieces of construction paper in every which way to make shapes, but you can also use these helpful foam shape stickers, to make it easier to prep. Either label each area or put a different shape in each area so kids will know which shape goes where.
Kids are like sponges. When they're engrossed in a fun task like sorting shapes on the sticky wall, they can pick up a lot more information through guided questioning techniques. Here are some questions to use while they're sorting shapes to help your child think about shapes in different ways.
You won't wanna miss these tape shapes. Look around your home for items that match the shapes and put them inside the matching tape shapes.
For a low prep shape sort, you can download my shape sorting pdf! Kids will practice sorting triangles, squares, rectangles, and hexagons.
And this crack the code activity! Does this count as sorting? It's kinda backwards sorting as you crack the shape code!
Wow! This kindergarten teacher avoids all prep with an epic collage that has kids sorting shapes they see in magazines! Check out 2D shape sort from thekindergartensmorgasbord.com.
Finally, if you're looking into 3D shape activities, you won't wanna miss this shape sort and so much more!
