Letter Hunt & Match: A Whole Alphabet Activity for Toddlers & Preschoolers

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If you’ve been following my blog, you know that we’ve been doing a lot of Letter of the Week activities related to specific letters: crafts, math, forming the letter, and reading piles of books that relate to it.  We’re doing this for the benefit of my Two, who learns best with some focused fun when it comes to remembering letters.

But I also believe it is extremely important to keep the whole alphabet in front of us — whether that’s by talking about letters when we see them, reading ABC books, or doing activities that allow exposure to the entire alphabet.

I saw an idea over on Teach Preschool which had kids dig for their names on sentence strips.  I loved it and decided to have my Two search for letters of the alphabet and match them to their cards.  To keep it simple, you could use refrigerator letters and match them to index cards with letters written on them.  We happen to have a great set of letters and cards: The Plan Toys Preschool Alphabet.

I’ve learned from experience that too much new information is overwhelming for my Two, so this time I put just six letters in the colored rice.  Only two were unfamiliar.  (To learn how we colored the rice, see this post.)

Then I set out the matching cards.  Aren’t they nice? I really like this toy.

My Two woke up very cranky from his nap, so he insisted on sitting on my lap.  This activity was the perfect solution to crabiness. He really loved it.  I had to smile as he matched the letters to the pictures.  “Q for princess!  W for fish!”  That’s okay.  One thing at a time, right? 🙂

This looked like so much fun that my Four and Five really wanted a turn.  We set the rice out on the floor.  Feeling brave, I decided to let my 13-month-old dig in the rice too. He was pretty excited, but it lasted for all of two minutes, when he started eating the rice.

The baby and I watched while the kids dug out all the letters and matched them to their cards.

We learned alphabet recognition, matching, and had some sensory fun all at the same time.

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