letter recognition

Plastic plates… so many possibilities

Looking for really cost effective whiteboards? Plastic plates from the dollar store are the way to go! I have used them in the classroom and at sunday school… and now I have used them at home with my preschooler and toddler!

We were outside and not much to do in our condo garden so I took some tools outside and did an impromptu activity. Only two supplies needed from home and very easy to pack and take anywhere. This activity can also be played indoors and can be adapted to whatever you are working on with your child or an interest that you are using to teach.

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For my preschooler (3.5 YO) we are working on sight words but very basic… I am starting with him trying to recognize the letter sound that he knows within words. So with each round the words had only one letter different each so he could focus on finding the sound he could hear.

The first round looked like this:

So I would line these up on the grass and then say one of the words. With a rock he collected from the grass he would throw it into the plate with the word I said.

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Here are some of the other words we did:

Because my toddler needs to do everything his brother does I did some with him that included shapes, he does not recognize the shapes yet so he would throw his stick first and then I would tell him the name of the shape that he chose. It was short lived with him and that was expected but the beauty of this activity is that i just gave him a marker and let him draw on the plates 🙂

Some extensions:

After we played a few rounds my LO wanted to draw on the plates like his brother so we played a few challenges of letters that he could draw.

You could do anything from colours, to pictures, letters, words the possibilities are endless

Try moving the plates farther and getting the child to throw the rock first, then walk unto the plate and try to read it.

Rice Letters

Yesterday, the kids were waiting for dinner and didn’t want to play, so I filled two trays with some rice and got them to draw/practice letter writing.

As my 3 year old has been experimenting with writing and forming letters it was a great activity to keep him busy. I would either show him how to make a letter (if he didn’t know how to write it) on one side of the tray and he would them mimic the actions on the other side or I would give him a letter sound and he would make the letter. I was amazed at how quickly he became confident in forming many of the letters. Of course in between letter making his hands HAD to become a bulldozer to erase the letter before he shook the tray.

My 1.5 YO was also given the activity in smaller scale and there was quite a mess involved but he had lots of fun just watching the gaps form on the tray. He would drag his fingers along the tray and enjoyed shaking the tray to erase what he had made. I feel like for him it was more of a sensory activity and exploration which was completely fine with me :).

Extensions:

  • using coloured rice to keep them engaged longer
  • giving them toothpicks or straws to write with to encourage pincer grip for the little ones and proper pencil grip for the preschoolers
  • a toy in the rice to extend play
  • confetti letters/numbers throughout to find and encourage discussion and letter recognition (they could also be used as prompts for which letter to write next)