Archive for the ‘Letter Recognition’ Category

Scrap paper , magazines and catalogs all crowd my recycle bin. So today I put them all to work for me and made this recycled alphabet craft using only one piece of paper that hadn’t been rescued from the bin. It’s fun, bright and makes a great long term cooperative art project for young kids. Pull it out when it’s rainy and search for a few letters in a magazine, glue them on and add some more another day. I like projects like these because they teach young kids how be committed to something over more than 20 minutes. Also in classrooms these long term cooperative projects always seemed to be the greatest sources of pride for my students.

1. Gather your materials. You will need one large piece of paper, some construction paper scraps, glue, a pen, some magazines/catalogs and scissors.
2. Start by cutting your construction paper into squares ( or any other shape)- this just makes a fun frame, you can skip this and simply glue the letters onto the paper too.
3. Glue them on. This is a fun way to get your child counting to 26, as well as figuring out how to fit all on one page. If your child is really young I would probably do this before bringing them into the activity, just so their energy is on the letters, not the set up.
4. Write the alphabet on the construction paper squares.
5. Cut some letters out of the magazines for your child if they need help. I did this for every age group I worked with up until school age.  They are still challenged looking for the individual letters but not frustrated by looking for them in magazines that may or may not have what they need. * Tip … auto magazines are great for these activities, because of the abundance of car makes with Z, Q and X  letters that are usually a pain to find.
6. Start adding the letters on. Go for as long as your child wants.  This does not need be be done in one sitting!
7. To make it more challenging for older kids have them find only upper or only lowercase letters.

Alphabet Books

ABC of Canada by Kim Bellefontaine is a cute little book that is a perfect little introduction about Canada for toddlers and preschoolers. The text is short, the colors are bright and the illustrations are both fun and accurate. I was happy to see things like the northern lights, Calgary Stampede and of course Z is for Zamboni ! Even if you have never been to Canada it’s never too early to learn about your neighbor to the north!

The Alphabet Tree is a stunning book. The book is all about letters that come together to make words and then after a caterpillar informs them that they need to say something they join together to make sentences. Up to this point the book is a brilliant teaching tool , but for me the best part is yet to come. When the words get together they decide to say ” Peace on earth goodwill toward all men” and then the caterpillar asks them to jump on his back so he can take the words to the president . Considering it was written in 1968 it’s quite the statement. A fantastic activity to do with your child after reading this would be to ask them what they would write to the president ? For younger children using letters on leaves you could spell out easy 3 letter words like they do early on in the story. All in all a brilliant book.

The Graphic Alphabet by David Pelletier is a fun book to share with a child who has already mastered the alphabet, because this book is challenging. Each letter is shown in it’s own illustration, but you aren’t sure exactly what the picture is of, this is the challenge. As you can see on the cover it has an avalanche, the hardest one for me was N no matter how I looked at the picture I thought it was of magnets! Turns out it was noodles! Very fun book for kids that already know their letters and are up for a challenge.

Want more Alphabet Crafts? Check out my Alphabet Crafts eBook and you will have a craft for every letter!

Learning the alphabet can be a real hurdle for some children, and we need to find activities that are more than simply pointing out the letters, repeating them and hoping they stick. All these activities are fun, dynamic and teach letter recognition through play and fun!

Car Alphabet

Letter Hunt

Magic Letter Writing

Letter Pizza !

Muffin Tin Letter Match

Custom Alphabet Book

Don’t miss our
Letter of the Week  Crafts

I often get asked how and when to start doing letter crafts.  My best advice is to start when your child starts paying attention to letters, pointing them out and enjoying alphabet books and toys.  The other question that normally follows that is which letter to start with? I suggest starting with a letter they are confident recognizing, and a theme they enjoy. This is why this family letter craft is so fun and perfect for beginners. Kids are narcissistic and  crafts with their own smiling faces are often sure fire hits! This uses your child’s initial as the letter of the week, my son decided we should also make M for mommy and D for daddy. We used lowercase because that is what we are working on but either upper or lower would be fine!

1. Gather your materials. You will need pictures of your child and whoever else you are making into letters, a sheet of construction paper for each letter, and one for the backing, scissors, glue , a marker and crayons.
2. Start by writing the letter on the construction paper.
3. Color the letter with crayons. We did this as a family so Daddy came and made his too !
4. While they color cut out the pictures.
5. While you cuts the letters out your child and husband can  play puppets with their picture cut outs  !
6. Add glue  to your cut out letter and glue it to the backing.
7. Add glue to the front of the letter- we did a little counting here , first counting the picture cut outs and then adding that number of glue globs to the letter.
8. Add the picture cut outs.
9. Let dry.

Alphabet Books

I have many alphabet book reviews here but these three are my 3 favorites for beginners.

Alphabet Under Construction by Denise Fleming is a wonderful example of what an alphabet book should be. Perfect for toddlers and preschoolers learning their first letters, the text is short , the letters are front and center and the illustrations are fun and interesting. My son loves this book, I grabbed it at the library after remembering how much my Pre K class loved it too! Many alphabet books are too long to read entirety at circle time or in one shot with a toddler but this my 19 month old will sit through Z every time!

Chicka Chicka ABC by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault is a fantastic board book and shorter version of the longer book. My son loves this book and it’s the perfect amount of text for a toddler, the illustrations by Lois Ehlert are so bright and bold that even very young babies will respond to it! A must have for all bookshelves.

Baby’s Alphabetby Jean Marzollo will appeal to your baby and toddler, we were given it as a gift and my son has loved it since about 9 months on. The photographs of other babies will keep your little one interested and you will be surprised how soon they will anticipate the next page, I know I was. Sadly our copy is now flying the friendly skies , we took it on a flight with us last week and forgot it. Hopefully someone with a baby finds it !

I can not explain how much fun these were to make, and then use at dinner.  Yesterday I asked my readers on facebook if their kids have chores, and that question came out of this post since setting the table is one of my son’s responsibilities. Making these fun monogrammed napkin rings made his job even more fun and he excitedly set the table, and made a point to tell us all why we had the letter we had.  Learning is never far away.

1. Gather your materials. You will need some corrugated cardboard, magnetic letters, water colors, scissors and a hot glue gun ( adults only!).
2. Start by having your child paint the cardboard with the watercolors. My son was so into this today, I think he liked the bumpy surface of the cardboard, and the sounds it made when he changed the force and speed with which he painted. Don’t put a time limit on this, but remember the younger the child, generally the shorter the time.
3. Let dry ( won’t take long).
4. Choose the letters you are using. Our well loved magnetic letters were short most of the vowels, so there was no A for Allie, instead I got M for Mommy, I like that name best anyway.
5. When the cardboard is dry cut out into strips.
6. I handed my son some scissors and the left over cardboard to have fun cutting while I used the now hot glue gun.
7. Glue the cardboard strips into rings.
8. Next he played with the extra letters.
9. And I glue the letters we’d selected onto the rings. You will want to hold the letters on for a minute while the glue congeals. Even big kids should have an adult do the gluing. I burnt myself 3 times ! Now you have napkin rings, and place cards all in one!

Yarn y

Y is always tricky but this craft does double duty not only reinforcing the letter y, but also as a active fine motor skills lacing toy! As you can see I wasn’t fussy about how my son laced it. I wanted him to get the yarn through the holes not make perfect stitches. Holding the yarn in between his thumb and fingers also promotes the tripod grip ( proper way to hold writing tools).

1. Gather your materials. You will need some cardboard, a hole punch, some markers, yarn, scissors and tape.
2. Write a lowercase ( would work great with uppercase too ) on your cardboard.
3. Hand it to your child and invite them to color it with markers.  My son has taken to tracing and writing the letter on it.
4. Add more colors until they decide they are done.
5. While they are coloring cut off a long piece  of yarn and double it, so it make a bog loop. Tape the 2 ends together tightly so that it makes a hard end for easy lacing.
6. Cut the y out.
7. Hole punch time!  Our card board was too thick for my son to punch the holes, if the cereal box in the picture hasn’t had writing on the inside ( why do they do that?!) it would have been great. If your child can help , have them help.
8. Before you hand the y back thread the yarn through the first hole and loop it back through the yarn so it ties onto the y. This eliminates meltdowns about the yarn just zooming through all the holes. As well as keeps the 2 pieces together for later use!
9. Lace! I laced the first two holes to demonstrate it to my son then let him at it.
10. Keep going!

Magic Writing!

Teaching children about letters is more fun if you include as many novel and sensory experiences as you can. This was a huge hit and even bigger mess, but well worth it. My son who is in the midst of a perfectionist phase loved that he could “erase” his letters. He also loved how the bright colors magically appeared under the cornstarch.

1. Gather your materials. You will need a shallow cardboard box, cornstarch, and some brightly colored markers, pastels or what I used… window markers.  
2. Color the bottom of your box with a few colors. If you are using anything “wet” let it dry 100% before adding the cornstarch.
3. Add the cornstarch and cover the color.
4. Start writing! Isn’t it cool how the colors pop? I was giddy that it worked!
5. Explore!
6. He wrote an M then exclaimed – look I can make a W too, then flipped the whole box , then wrote another M.
7. We stepped outside to shake all the extra off!

Have fun this one is MESSY – I was covered, my camera was covered, my son was covered and we had a blast!

Some of our Favorite Alphabet Books