ABC'S and 123'S

I borrowed this idea from www.TotallyTots.blogspot.com

Try this at home with your preschoolers

This letter sort “game,” as Juliette referred to it was a big hit.  Sorting the letters is a great way to talk about the letters and the sounds that they make while focusing on the shape of each letter and how it looks. 

To set up the activity I picked a few letters to focus on, in this example we were working with the first five letters of the alphabet.  Then I went to my bin of Magnetic Letters and took out all the letters we were going to work with and placed them in a little basket.  Then I wrote each letter on a piece of colored construction paper to create letter mats for Juliette to sort the Magnetic Letters onto.

Most little kids LOVES stickers.  They usually sit and makes pictures by sticking them onto the paper. Help them to show you things that are the same and play matching.  Try a matching activity with ABC stickers. 

First, make an Alphabet Grid with the letters from A-Z 

Next, pick out a set of ABC stickers and cut them apart so that you have 26 letter stickers.

You can have them just match the stickers up.  Also try making it more like a game. Kids love games.

 

"Juliette started by the grid and ran to the basket, picked a sticker and brought it back.  We talked about the letter and the sound that it made then she found it on the grid and covered it with the new colorful sticker."

Juliette loved being able to run to the letters, we counted 1,2,3 go and then she would run to get another sticker.  You could also have your child skip, hop or jump to get the stickers too. 

After about 6 letters she was tired and we took a break, then we did a few more later in the day at her request!

This activity ended up packing in a lot of great skills in a very fun way.  We practiced letter sounds, letter names, fine motor skills, gross motor skills and matching.

Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s is a bi-monthly feature that focuses on practical and simple ideas that you can do at home to help your tot develop their letter and number skills.