I’m joining in the global A-Z blog party today with an alphabet dedicated to learning how to write. Here are twenty-six fun, creative, tried-and-tested ideas that you can use with your children to help them enjoy their first steps in learning how to write. There are ideas here for sensory alphabets, making spellings fun, encouraging creative storytelling and bringing writing into your everyday imaginary play.
Here’s how to make your own bingo game to help your child practise their letters.
1. Make several grids on paper or card. You can draw them by hand or print them from the computer. You need at least one grid per player but if you make more you’ll be able to swap cards and play the game several times. You can make the grid any size you like but 6 squares are a good start for pre-schoolers.
2. Add a letter into each square.
3. Make a set of square cards with a letter on each, corresponding to the letters on your grids.
4. Give every player a grid and then turn the square cards face down.
5.Take it in turns to pick a square card. When you turn over a square, see if you can make the right sound for the letter.
6. If the letter you picked is on your grid you can keep it to cover up the letter on your grid. If you don’t have the letter on your grid, place it back face-down.
7. The winner is the first person to cover all the letters on their card and gets to shout ‘bingo!’.
You can of course make different versions of this game to work on numbers, colours and words.
Do you have a young child who is learning their ABCs and 123s, and do you want to make their learning fun? Our ABCs and 123s resource of mulitsensory, play-based letter and math activities is just what you need. See more here.
L is getting more and more interested in letters and we’re using our magnetic alphabet set to play some alphabet games. There are lots of ways you can use letters of course, depending on how old your children are, but here are two easy games to use with those just starting to recognise letters.
I spy my name
Put a selection of letters on the fridge door (making sure they are all the right way up) and ask your child if they can hunt out the ones which are in their name. We’ve been writing L’s name on drawings, coat pegs, cards to send to friends and so on ever since she was tiny so she’s had lots of chance to get to know what her name looks like. I sound out the letters of her name as I write them and she has learned the sounds, order and shape of them pretty much just by observing this. A child’s name is a great place to start working with letters: they’re pretty ego-centric so they like it being all about them! We always use a capital first letter and lowercase for all the others (so I replicate this with the fridge magnets too).
Letter snap
We put all the letters on the fridge and I select one and say ‘this is an ‘a” and ask L if she can make a match. Snap! She likes to take a turn choosing a letter for me to match – which lets me see how many letters she knows the sound for.
Have you got a set of magnetic letters on your fridge door? How do you play with yours?
We’re making Little a parade of letters to go around her bedroom wall. Big has had an alphabet wall chart up since she was 3, and if Big Sister has one…
We could buy one of course, but where’s the fun in that? By making our own we can incorporate lots of other skills and new things to try out, such as using scissors. We’re going to include a sensory element too – having touchy-feely letters you can trace round with your fingers helps children to learn the letter’s form. We’re not working from a – z, as learning alphabetical order will come later. Our focus to begin with is on letters which mean something to Little, and as we’ve been knitting this weekend we’re starting with…
W is for wool
I drew out a ‘w’ on some red paper.
Little has learnt how scissors operate and enjoys snipping away to make random shapes but now I’m encouraging her to try and follow along a line sometimes too.
She applied glue very liberally to her W.
And then we added lots of soft wool onto the glue. We left if to dry and then stuck it onto a piece of card. We’ve not decided yet how we’re going to put them up on to the wall – maybe on a long roll of paper, maybe on a washing line. Any suggestions for us?
How are you introducing letters with your child?
We’ve been playing I-spy Letters today as we were out and about in the neighbourhood. We were hunting for the lettert ‘R’, which happens to be the initial of Little’s best friend, but of course you can choose whichever letter you like: think about what stage your child is at with letter recognition and play the game accordingly.
Young children might just be able to spot the first letter of their name. Older children can be set the challenge of spotting each letter in alphabetical order. If you have more than one child you can even make this a competition to see who can find all the letters of their name first. Aside from helping children to actually recognise letters, this game helps them to sort through an assortment of information to home in on what they’re searching for. It shows them that letters have a real purpose, as you can talk about what all the writing is telling passers-by. It’s also good for them to see words written all sorts of different fonts and in both upper and lower case.
Somedays the school run can be fun, other days it can be a chore, so it’s handy to have a few games ready to use if the kids need to be chivvied on a little. What games do you play?
Do you have a young child who is learning their ABCs and 123s, and do you want to make their learning fun? Our ABCs and 123s resource of mulitsensory, play-based letter and math activities is just what you need. See more here.