Teaching the alphabet is part of every parent-child relationship. Whether we just feel inclined to sing the ABCs constantly, or make it more fun, it is something that we all do regardless of whether we even intend on implementing more of a tot school routine. For us, when we took time to focus on the alphabet itself, we did not do much of it in order. Even if it’s great for children to know and recite the song, letter recognition is far more important to me. Keep reading to find some of our favorite activities, books, and even a free printable I made to share with you!
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The first thing I feel like I should mention is that I like to not focus on more than 6 concepts at a time. So 26 letters was a bit much for the week, but that’s part of why we have been slowly discussing theme throughout our learning journey. For the week we did 3 or 4 letters each day.
Easy Activities and Supplies to help learn letters
My daughter is a very active and busy toddler. Therefore, to help her focus on tasks at hand, sometimes we need to create a visual interest for her. Lately, we have found that she really benefits from the focus that a light table brings. While we personally do not have anything fancy, we are absolutely loving our Crayola Light Up Tracing Pad. It serves its purpose well and is also portable.
That being said, we used some awesome letter stencils from Fiskar this week to explore letters and even placed some white paper on the tracing pad and let my daughter play with an assortment of letter stickers.
Other Books and Supplies we loved:
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a fabulous book that my daughter loves to really dive into and get enthusiastic about when we read it. Should be a part of any child’s library!
- A great Wooden Puzzle is a classic for a reason. This is the one we have and we like it because it’s not so busy with pictures and everything. We wanted to maintain our focus on one concept at a time.
- Bath Letters are a fun way to recap at night or just learn in the water. Sometimes an afternoon bath is great for the sanity of both of us and it’s a way to focus on learning since she is confined to a small space with limited things to entertain.
- Fridge Magnets – these are wooden, super cute, and super cheap. Great for entertaining in the kitchen, on the go, or anywhere there’s a magnetic surface.
- We review our animals with the Eric Carle ABC book.
- And we reviewed our food and plant units with Lois Ehlert’s Eating a Rainbow.
Free Printable to teach letters
We love finding fun ways to incorporate sometimes not as fun topics into our day. So I created and drew a printable of two of her favorite things to help her be a little more interested in learning letters. I am offering the printable to you for free as well! Just click on the image you see below that mentions it is for the download. Feel free to use for personal use.
Other activities to consider:
- Natural Beach Living is a wonderful blog with lots of Letter of the week ideas in her Alphabet Archive!
- I personally love this idea from Glittering Muffins to take magnetic numbers to the playground for playful and active learning. Obviously, just substitute the numbers for letters and you’re golden!
- These are some great letter activities from the Educators’ Spin On It and are definitely worth checking out! I really liked the simplicity of the pencil and how it is a mini art project.
Find more Tot School Learning Themes to fill your entire year!
Kara is an author and advocate for positive, grace-filled parenting. She is homeschooler to her 4 children living in Boston, MA and believes in creative educational approaches to help kids dive deeper into a rich learning experience. She has her degree in Secondary Education & Adolescent Childhood Development and is passionate about connecting with and helping other parents on their journey to raise awesome kids!
Valerie @Glittering Muffins
Thanks for including us 🙂 Nice round up of activities you have here! The kids loved the number game so much we never had a chance to switch to letters (which was the plan), lol.