Letter R Activities for 2-year-olds

Check out our collection of fun, age-appropriate letter R activities for 2-year-olds!

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We spend about 15-20 minutes each school day doing “tivities” to help my Two learn the letters and their sounds.

We’re starting with the letters of her name and are almost ready to go back to letter B and work through the alphabet in order. To see our progress so far, visit this page.

We started with rock activities, since they’re such a fun manipulative for little hands. Of course you wouldn’t want to do this if your 2-year-old is still putting things in her mouth, but we’ve been past that phase for a long time.

Pressing rocks into play dough is so much fun!

I had no idea that putting rocks into a bin of soapy water with a sponge would give my Two so much entertainment, but she was at this for a good thirty minutes. It’s the little things!

I also pulled out our balance and let her explore with the rocks. She was busy with this for only a few minutes. (Her older brother, age four, spent much more time with it.)

I took a permanent marker and wrote the names of the letters we’ve learned on different rocks. Then I labeled the bottoms of four cupcake liners, put them in a muffin tray, and showed my Four how to sort them. She did great!

If your child is struggling to remember the names of letters, do a lot of sorting activities like this one. It’s a good first step.

I printed a block letter R (get yours here) on cardstock and cut it out. Then my Two glued cotton balls on the top and drew rain drops with blue paint.

We keep a bag of stale Froot Loops in the basement for activities like this one. We printed the template from Housing a Forest, and I put drops of glue on each band of the rainbow. We began by sorting the cereal by color, but by the end you can see she’d lost patience with that. 😉

We printed the free letter R and pictures from Learning the Alphabet. As my Two glued the pictures, we talked about their names. I like to emphasize the beginning sound as she works. “Ring! /r/ /r/ ring.”

Of course, we can’t forget about our letter books. She loves to listen to the nursery rhymes and turn the pages herself. Get your free book here.

Instead of cutting out all the letter R pictures (get yours free in the download at the end of this post), I kept them on a single sheet and pulled out poker chips. I named the pictures and had my Two cover each one. What a great vocabulary builder!

I thought we could make rainbow block towers to help her practice the names of colors. I built a tower and tried to help her copy it with her own set of blocks. When it seemed I was doing more than she was, I realized she’s not quite ready for this. The last tower shows her attempt to copy mine. 🙂

It’s a great activity, though, so be sure to visit Mom Inspired Life if you want to give it a try.

This is a really great fine motor activity from Jamie at Hands on As We Grow (she’s the genius behind simple, high interest activities for kids – check out her amazing activity plans!).

Both my Two and Four enjoyed putting rubber bands on cans. My Two needed a fair amount of help, but she was able to apply many of the bands herself.

A tip: get rubber bands in a variety of sizes and colors, like these.

Even though my Two hasn’t mastered one-to-one correspondence yet, I printed this rainbow fish activity from Childcareland. I named the numbers and told her how many “bubbles” to put above the fish. She did great with 1 and 2 bubbles, and could do 3 bubbles with help. It was a good introduction to counting objects.

Since my Two is learning her letters for the first time, I do several alphabet review activities each week. This time I wrote the letters on glass gems and buried them in dried pasta. She enjoyed digging them out and putting them in the corresponding quadrants.

Get your free printable letters and pictures in the link at the bottom of this post.

Check out the rest of the series!

Check out our letter of the week curriculum!

Get your free letters and photo cards!

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