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alphabet

learning activity

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This alphabet seek-n-find tube is a great tool for little kids to use to learn their letters and have fun doing it! Plus, make the project even more colorful with our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kiwico.com/projects/Kool-Aid-Dyed-Rice/869">Kool-Aid dyed rice</a> recipe.

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Start by collecting your alphabet beads, rice, and tube. If you'd like, use a funnel to add a small amount of the rice to the tube. (Our funnel is silicone and collapsible.  It doubles as a toddler toy in our house...if I can't find it in the kitchen, it is usually in V's play house.  So using the funnel for us was a must!)

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After adding the rice, add about 5-7 letters, then some more rice, and then some more letters, and so on and so forth until you fill the container up about three-quarters from the top. This part is definitely an activity for a toddler to do because it is okay if it gets a little messy and the letters get mixed up. But this next step is a mama step: Seal the lid shut with hot glue and wait until completely cooled before handing off to your little one.

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Next, print out the&nbsp;<a href="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/images.kiwicrate.com/printables/KoalaCrate_Seek-n-Find_DIY.pdf">alphabet card</a>. We chose to laminate ours (clear contact paper works the same if you do not have access to a laminator), so that we could use our dry erase crayons and mark off the letters as we located them in the tube.

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This activity is a great busy bag activity because it is nice and small. I have the tube, the printable, and a dry erase crayon in a baggie and keep it right in my diaper bag. It holds V's attention when we are somewhere and have to wait, such as a restaurant, in the store, or in line at the bank. Have fun on your Seek-N-Find scavenger hunt!

plastic water bottle, empty (or plastic tube)

rice (colored or plain)

letter beads

hot glue gun

printable

dry erase markers

contact paper (optional)

funnel (optional)

Seek-N-Find Alphabet Tube

indoor game

There are few toys my boys love more than their Matchbox cars. As I watched them eagerly race two cars at a time down their track, I was struck with an idea. With one simple twist, their playful competition would make a motivating and educational game. Sight Word Drag Racing was born!

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Before inviting your child to join you, write one sight word in the middle of each label and stick it onto the hood of a race car.  When choosing the sight words to work on first, I like to use the most common English words in print. The first 20 words on that list are: {a, I, it, the, and, in, of, to, he, is, that, was, look, you, said, for, up, go, we, play}.

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When you're ready, invite your child to write one sight word on each line of a Drag Racing Bracket. I made mine on the computer but it would work just as well to make one on a blank sheet of paper. The two words in the blue box will race in the first round. In this example, the cars labeled {my} and {he} are assigned to Heat One. The two sight words in the green box will race next, and so on.

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Now comes the fun. Have your child place the cars that will be racing in Round One at the top of the ramp. After counting down in your best announcer's voice, have your child race them. (Using a low, booming announcer's voice always makes me laugh too.)

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The car to cross the finish line first is the winner. Have your child write the winning word on the line next to the blue bracket.  In this example, {my} won Heat One.  Racing and writing continues until one car speeds its way to the winner's circle.

Small cars

small labels

markers

race track

paper

Sight Word Drag Racing

Create this gigantic alphabet mat for your kids to make learning letters fun!

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There are so many ways to use this gigantic alphabet mat to make learning letters fun! To create the mat, use an inexpensive shower curtain liner. You can even find these at dollar stores. Use a permanent marker to make the circles and write the letters. I traced a paper plate to make the circles even. 

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What are some ways you can use this alphabet mat? Sing the alphabet song while stepping from letter to letter. Or ask your child to jump to a certain letter. "Can you jump to the P?" "Can you jump to the letter that says /c/?" "Can you hop over to the letter M for Mom?". 

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You can also match and sort letter magnets onto your mat. Or search the playroom for different things to match to their beginning letter sound (characters, play food, stuffed animals, etc.). Minnie Mouse found her home on the M circle and the play cookies were put in a pile on the C circle. 

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The ideas are endless! Toss a bean bag or a ball and name the letter that it lands on. Toss it to the letters of your name. So much fun! 

plastic shower curtain liner

permanent markers (e.g., sharpies)

Giant Alphabet Mat

We are having so much fun playing and learning with letters! Today we fished for letters and letter sounds. 

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You may have some of these foam puzzles around the house and this is a fun idea to use them in a different way. If you don't have these type of foam letters, you can also use plastic, magnetic letters or plastic bottle tops with letters written on them in permanent marker. 

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Put foam or plastic letters in a bowl of water. Use a slotted spoon to scoop out a letter and transfer it to the empty bowl. As your child scoops each letter, encourage him/her to say the name of the letter and/or the letter sound. 

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You can also ask your child to hunt for and scoop out a certain letter. "Can you find the 'M'?". 

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You can also use kitchen tongs to transfer the letters from bowl to bowl. That was a fun challenge and great for practicing fine motor skills!   

foam letters

bowl

water

slotted spoon and/or tongs

Fishing for Letters

Play and learn letter sounds with this Alphabet Neighborhood activity. 

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Keep your old tissue boxes and dryer sheet boxes to make an alphabet neighborhood. I cut the top of each box off and wrote a letter with a permanent marker in the bottom. I used packaging tape to stack and tape them together, but it would also work to line them up or spread them around the room. 

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Then we talked about what kinds of things could live in our alphabet neighborhood. We have a D house, a B house, an S house, etc. Only things that start with D or say /d/ can live in the D house. So we went on a hunt around the play room. 

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Your child may want to only hunt for one letter at a time or find different toys and see if they can live in any of the letter houses. 

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After a while of hunting, she got frustrated that the objects she found didn't belong in any of the rooms so my older son and I found the objects and she figured out which letter house they belonged in. She was happy with that because not only could she focus on just sorting by letter sounds, but it also gave her a chance to arrange them and pretend with the houses. 

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You could save up enough boxes to make a neighborhood using all 26 letters or just use common ones like we did. Another idea would be to write numbers in the boxes (instead of letters) and only that number of animals or princesses or superheroes can live in each one. 

kleenex box

permanent marker

Toys

Alphabet Neighborhood

sensory activity

craft

homemade craft

easy craft

One of the things I enjoy doing with V is incorporating learning into a fun activity.  And if that activity can be incorporated into a busy bag--well, I love it even more!  This activity for the Pre-K level concentrates on visual-motor skills, hand-eye coordination, letter recognition, word identification, as well as picture-word matching.

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First gather your materials, including the printed-out <a href="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/images.kiwicrate.com/printables/Studio_3_letter_lacing.pdf">Letter Lacing Printable</a>. (Optional: Laminate the printable with clear contact paper). Next, cut the sheet into the 10 word flashcards. (V.'s not quite old enough for scissors yet--but of course, this is a step that slightly older kids can do on their own.)

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Using one half of the pipe cleaner, have your child thread the matching letters, building the word for each card. It's easier for small hands to thread things on a pipe cleaner (rather than string) because of its stiffness.  This is a great busy bag activity to keep in your purse for restaurants.  It's one of the more frequently requested busy bags in my diaper bag.

pipe cleaners (cut in half)

letter beads (with at least a 1/8 inch opening)

letter lacing printable

Scissors

sandwich bag / small ziplock bag

contact paper (clear) (optional)

3 Letter Lacing Busy Bag

numbers

household craft

food play

Get to know your ABCs and 123s! Fill Ziploc® brand sandwich bags with rice, letters, and numbers to create a game of Find and Seek. Reinforce early literacy and math skills to help kids learn and recognize both letters and numbers in a fun and playful way. Encourage kids to find and sort through letters and numbers with the help of our visual alphabet and numbers printable chart. This is also a great way to encourage sensory play and fine motor skills practice.

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Gather your materials. (If you don’t have plastic letters, you can cut out paper letters from the provided <a href="http://icdn.kiwicrate.com/printables/2019_Ziploc_Seek_And_Find_ABCs_123s_Printable.pdf">printable</a>.)

Place the letters in a Ziploc® brand sandwich bag. If your letters are too big to fit (i.e. large refrigerator magnets), split the alphabet up into multiple bags.

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Fill the bag with a cup of rice. As you seal the bag, push out as much air as you can.

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There are lots of different ways to encourage play and learning. Try laying the bag flat and identifying all the letters you see. Or point to a letter on the alphabet printable and try to find it in the bag. Squish the rice around until you find the letter you’re looking for. Create another bag with numbers to practice early math skills.

If your child finds certain letters challenging, create a special bag with those particular letters. Ask questions like: What letters do you see? How many words can you think of that start with that letter? Can you find the first letter of your name? Do this with numbers to reinforce early math skills and number recognition too! Can you put the numbers in order? Can you find your age? For an extra challenge, teach your child how to add numbers. Point to two numbers in the chart and ask them to add them together. Can you find the answer in the bag?

ziploc brand sandwich bags

plastic letters or numbers

rice (1 cup)

alphabet and numbers printable

Find and Seek ABCs and 123s

math

math games

Teaching kids can be challenging, especially finding a way to keep it interesting for the little ones. My kids love anything they can do that is hands on, so I made a game for each using just some paper plates and a brad. The same idea can be used to make any type of fun educational game. 

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To make the game, you can have kids help out in the process, or you can do what I did and make it yourself and just let your kids play with it when you are done. You will need 3 plates for each game that you make. Leave one full size, trim the rim off another and cut a little chunk out of the side, and then cut the third plate smaller than the second.

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For my math-obsessed five-year-old, I made the math game. To do that,  I wrote "problems" on the smallest center piece. Then I wrote all the answers on the larger plate. I mixed up the order to make it a little more challenging. 

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Then you will stack the plate pieces from the smallest to the largest. Poke a hole in the center and put a brad to secure the plates together. Then spin the top plate to the problem you want to solve and spin the middle plate to find the answer. 

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Since math is a bit advanced for my three-year-old, I made her an alphabet game for her to match lowercase and uppercase letters. I wrote the lowercase letters on the smaller piece in the right order then for the uppercase I mixed up the order to make it more challenging. 

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Now it's time to have fun! My five-year-old, especially, loved his game. As you can see, he used every tool available to him to solve the problems... 

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Then spun the plate quickly to find the answer. He loved it!

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My three-year-old loved matching up the letters in the alphabet. She would cheer every time she matched them right. Both kids loved playing and learning at the same time. 

paper plate (the bigger the better)

brad

Paper Plate Math & Alphabet Game

plant science

outdoor activities

nature walk

earth

plants

outdoor project

Wandering in nature is a fine pastime, hmm?  You can find all sorts of familiar shapes and symbols. For this adventure we were looking for the alphabet.  
What letters can you discover?

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There are ABCs out there in the world...did you know?

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And there are a few other letters, too....

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camera (optional)

sketch pad and pencils (optional)

Nature's Alphabet

art project

My kids love any project that allows them to use glue. Since they also love to color we created a fun project that allowed them to glue dried beans and peas to add color and design. 

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Start by gathering your supplies. We used dried black beans, and Green and Yellow Split peas. I put each on a paper plate for easy use. Then we used construction paper as the base but a coloring page or design would work great. Also you will need glue. 

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We started by drawing the design on the paper, both kids wanted their initial so we kept it simple and I drew the letter outline on the paper. Then they added the glue to the paper. 

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They used a small foam paint brush to help spread the glue. (totally optional but they liked it and it was a little less messy)

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Then they stuck the dried beans and peas down, in the pattern or design they wanted. It was a good way to teach them to stay in the lines. 

Panda Crate

Sprout: Koala Crate

Labs: Kiwi Crate

World: Atlas Crate

Studio: Doodle Crate

Labs: Tinker Crate

Studio: Maker Crate

Labs: Eureka Crate

32 fun alphabet projects for kids

Screen-free fun!