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December 11, 2019 | Leave a Comment

Missing Letters – Preschool Alphabet Game

This isn’t the prettiest activity, but it is the most straightforward preschool alphabet game, and children love it. As a preschool teacher, I work hard to give my students a firm foundation of literacy skills. I beleive firmly in providing a good, albeit very basic, understanding of the alphabetic principle ( understanding that letters make sounds that come together to make words), phonics, as well as letter recognition. Of course, with my students who are all just turning 3, I keep it simple. One of the hallmarks of good teaching is building on what your students already know to bolster confidence. This game does that because one thing most of my students come to my class already knowing is how to sing the alphabet. Yes, most teachers know that being able to sing the alphabet does not translate to “knowing letters,” but this preschool alphabet game helps to use their knowledge of the song to introduce or practice a little letter recognition.

letter game for preschool

Letter Game For Preschool

Gather your materials. If you don’t have a chalkboard or whiteboard, grab some poster paper, a marker, and some tape.

First, write out the alphabet on a poster paper leaving a few letters out. You can do upper or lowercase letters with this alphabet game. 

Explain to your students that some letters are missing, and you need their help to find them.  

Sing the alphabet song while touching each letter. I like to speed it up sometimes… or go really slow. Make this letter game fun!

When you get to a blank spot, stop and ask, “Wait, what goes here?” Be silly. Have fun, and pretend like the letter is really gone forever. Being silly helps to make what could be a tedious task, completely rad. Using the alphabet song helps the children figure out which letter is missing. When I am first doing this alphabet game with children, we usually stop at the blank spot, then go back singing the whole alphabet without me saying stop, and simply singing until the missing letter. For example; If F is missing, we might go… “a b c d e _ oh no someone took the next letter?! Who would do that we need to figure out which letter comes next!” I listen to their suggestions. If A child busts out with f, I will say, ” I think you are right. Let’s double-check.” Then we sing again, but without stopping a b c d e f … it is f.”

Invite one child to write the letter on the board. If they are too young to write, try using magnetic letters or post-it notes with the missing letter written on them. 

Continue with the rest of the missing letters. With beginners, I start singing back at a, but older children can usually pick up mid-alphabet.

Don’t forget that this is a wonderful way to work on lowercase letters as so many of our students come to us with uppercase letter knowledge but lacking lowercase recognition.

 

More Early Literacy Ideas

If you want more super simple literacy activities like this one that you can use in your early childhood education classroom, you have to check out my newest book Setting The Stage for Rock-Star Readers. It is packed with activities that work and help early educators lay the most robust foundation for literacy as possible for their students.

Filed Under: Age Preschool, Alphabet activities, Alphabet For Starters, Letter Recognition, Letters & Numbers | Leave a Comment

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