Fun with Letters

Here are several variations of the letter activities we do along with Learn with Homer and Letter and Sound Recognition pages. Most can be done without any prep work and with items you most likely have on hand. We focus on one letter/sound a week and refer to it as our “special letter”.

Letter Hunt – Logan walks around the house with his magnifying glass to spy the special letter (occasionally, his treasure map helps us too). We look at food products in the kitchen, a calendar, labels on his toy bins, the mail that comes that day, etc. When Logan finds the special letter, he gets a jewel to put in his treasure box. Then when he is done his letter hunt, he counts the jewels to see how many letters he found that day. I found these jewels at the dollar store in the floral arrangement department. We use them all the time!

A Tisket-a-Tasket – “A green and yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my friend and on the way I dropped it…A little boy picked it up and put it in his pocket.” This nursery rhyme implies that a letter (mail) was dropped, but we pretend it’s our special letter that was dropped around the house. Logan knows where we have alphabet collections (in flashcards, fridge magnets, foam bath letters, building blocks, puzzles, and games). He goes to the collections and looks through to find the special letter. Then he makes his own collection of the special letter.

A Tisket-a-Tasket Variation – We do this activity together and help each other find the letters. Logan uses the special letter of the week and writes a different special letter for me to find. What makes this version interesting for Logan is that some alphabet collections have missing letters, so someone can win by finding more letters than the other person. Although, I think he’s catching on to which letters are missing. I seem to get the short end of the stick when we play these days.

Sound Search and Find – This activity focuses on the initial letter sound of objects around the house. Logan gathers objects, usually toys, that start with the sound of our special letter. We did N last week and he brought a knight to his collection. I congratulated him for finding the correct sound and then we talked about how some words have a silent letter in front. He later found a gnome, which was very helpful in reinforcing silent letters!

Here are 2 more ways to use the letter mats from the Letter and Sound Recognition package:

Do you have letter and sound activities you do with your little one? Please share in the comments! I’d love to hear more ideas.