Teaching your children or students about letters means a lot of things. Teaching to recognize and name letters, to know the sound the letters make, and how to make the shape of the letter in it’s upper and lowercase forms. It takes time and finding different dynamic ways to do this can make learning letters a ton of fun. We made upper case button letters and while we made them we tried to think of all the words we could that started with the same sounds. This is part of our Alphabet For Starters series, the goal for this series is to provide hands-on ways to explore letters while also developing other areas like fine motor development, math skills and more.
Gather your materials. You will need some construction paper, a pencil, white glue , and lots of colorful buttons.
Start by having your child choose a letter and write it on the paper. If they are still learning how to make the letter write it for them. They will get a chance to work on the formation with the next step.
Now grab the glue and trace the letter with it. I showed her how to do it with my letter A, then she did hers. I did glue tracing letters with my son a few years ago and plan to do the same with my daughter soon since she is showing a desire to write and form the letters. 
Add the buttons! 
She loved this. I enjoyed watching her take her time picking out which button to add next. 
We talked about the letter sounds but after that we moved on to the attributes of the buttons themselves. Counting was naturally included as well. 
Don’t worry about planning topics with this activity beyond the letter sounds but be ready to jump on the topics that naturally arise. I had her estimate how many buttons it would take for her to finish the letter and she was right. She was also very happy about being right! 
She was so into it she finished mine for me. 
All done! 
Katie @ The Surly Housewife says
My kids will love this! Thanks for the idea 🙂
Anik says
I’ve just bought huge bag of buttons! Great idea how to use them 🙂
Mary Catherine says
Oh, I know my preschoolers will LOVE this literacy-minded craft! And I bet my son would love creating words with the buttons. Thanks! 🙂
laura (chickywiggle) says
what a fantastic idea, that should keep them busy for a bit.
Bonnie says
My preschool would love this activity! We are always looking for fun things to do.
Lauren says
Where’s the best place to buy a lot of buttons? They seemed expensive at JoAnn Fabrics and we don’t have Walmart in my area. TIA!
Allison McDonald says
Dollar store – and Walmart.
Jeannene says
I do a similar activity in my pre-k classroom. They decorate the fist letter in there name. We use a variety of collage materials that include, noodles, small pieces of yarn, beads, feathers, tissue paper, sequins, glitter. Yes it can be a bit messy but they love that theirs is different from everyone else. We have the alphabet on the wall and their decorated letter is placed under the alphabet letter on the wall. I also take a picture of each kid and I attach it to their decorated letter. So other stuff know whose letter is whose.