When children are learning the alphabet, it’s helpful to engage their senses beyond traditional reading and writing activities. Try this easy set-up, hands-on activities to get kids excited about playing with letters.
Playdough
Playdough is an excellent way to tap into kinesthetic learning styles. Kids who are kinesthetic learners absorb information best through moving and touching. They don’t want to just look at something or hear about it; they want to explore it with their hands! Feeling and manipulating playdough as they use it to create letters can help them remember the alphabet.
Letter Soup
Letter tiles or beads become even more fun to explore when things get a little messy! Use a bowl, pie plate, or any container you choose. Spray some shaving cream inside, then have kids bury the letters. Provide them with measuring cups and spoons so they can scoop out letters or mix them up. They might prefer to use their hands though! Kids can pretend they’re making letter soup or, maybe, letter pie! Challenge them by having them hunt for certain letters you call out. Or ask them to search for the letters in their name.
Rice Bins
Rice is an excellent material to use in sensory bins. Just pour some rice into a bin then add in items that will help children explore letters and sounds. You can use magnetic letters, letter tiles, Scrabble tiles, letter beads, or laminated letter cards. Then, throw in some small objects that kids can use to represent letter sounds. For example, add in people or animal figurines and dollhouse furniture or accessories. Kids can dip their hands into the rice to find the letters and objects. Challenge them to match the objects to the letter they begin with or to match upper- and lowercase letters.
Cookie Cutters
Alphabet cookie cutters provide a fun way for children to explore letters. You can use them for their original intention – baking – and make alphabet cookies together. Try a simple sugar cookie recipe. Decorating them with icing and sprinkles afterward is even more fun! If you’re not interested in baking or want a more simple activity, set out the cookie cutters with playdough. Kids can create all kinds of letters, spell their names, flatten the dough out, and start all over again! Adding cookie cutters to your playdough table, along with a mini roller, play scissors, and other molds is a great way to incorporate letters into children’s play.
Puzzles
Puzzles are another concrete material you can use to help children learn letter names as well as sounds. Some puzzles include pieces that you fit together in pairs. For example, the letter “k” is attached to a puzzle piece with a kite on it. In addition to matching all the letters with the correct picture, you can challenge kids to put the pairs in order, from “a” to “z.” You can also have kids use their puzzles to practice saying the sound each letter makes.
Wooden alphabet puzzles contain a cut-out to fit each letter into. This can help children begin recognizing the shape of each letter and how to distinguish them from each other, using their physical characteristics. Wooden puzzles typically have the letters in alphabetical order, which helps kids start recalling which letters are near the beginning of the alphabet and which ones are near the end.
Songs with Actions
If you’ve ever had a song get stuck in your head, you realize how valuable it can be to use music to remember things. Alphabet songs can help not only with recalling the names of letters but also their sounds. Children can watch and sing along to videos, or you can lead the songs yourself. You might also find poems or rhymes that help kids remember letters. Adding in actions is helpful for kinesthetic learners. When teaching the alphabet, appealing to different senses and even more than one sense at a time can help out our youngest learners.
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