Letter Sounds Tray Activity – with familiar foods!

Little erasers are so appealing ( because they are cute? I have no clue!) but what is really appealing about this letter sounds activity is that it uses familiar foods to work on literacy skills. Why is that awesome? Well, as children learn something new we want to reinforce it and in my experience when it’s reinforced naturally it packs a bigger punch than if we do this one activity over and over. Kids see these foods whether they are eating them or not pretty often and if your child is anything like mine they will recall this lesson and let you know that bananas are spelled with a lowercase b! I never told her a thing about spelling… but that’s the beauty of doing short but meaningful activities, they add up and your child adds them all up and constructs new meaning!

Gather your materials. You will need some food erasers ( We got ours at Party City) and some sentence strips ( ours are sticky back which is wonderful for changing up the letters in a class), a marker, and a tray. 

Write out the letters that correspond to the sounds. We are doing beginning sounds because that is where my daughter is at. We have talked about other sounds but are sticking close to the beginning ones for now, no rush! Write them out as lowercase letters remember that children will be reading lowercase letters much more often than uppercase. 

Stick the strips on a tray or cookie sheet! Oh I forgot to mention a cute little holder for the erasers ( you can’t see them on the table, but I had to dump out a bunch of gems to use this one). Add the erasers and invite your kiddo. 

Dump them ( but just reaching in and taking them out one by one is great too) and start matching them up. Having a limited amount of items helps kids to feel successful. If your child is struggling say the words with them, you can slow it down but make sure the sound isn’t too distorted. Encourage them to say the words as well, it helps to hear themselves. They are still learning but it’s a small dose, this is something parents like me with kids in kindergarten can do for a few minutes on thr weekend. 

Kids love to be able to touch and relate to what they are learning and while a fully realistic experience is even better, a little hands-on manipulative time for literacy is great too! 

All done! Next you can use these little erasers for counters or in a rhyming basket. What woud you use them for?