Letters and Letter Sounds are Everywhere!

Letter Recognition

Letters are Everywhere --Draw your child's attention to letters and words in his/her environment (signs, cereal boxes, toy boxes, menus, etc.)

Letter Writer--Have your child trace letters on/in different surfaces (sand, rice, cloth, etc.) Say the name of the letter with your child as they form the letter.

Letter Builder--Build letters with different materials such as macaroni, pipe cleaners, playdough, etc.

Print the Letters -- Practice printing upper and lower case letters. (one time each week)

Tactile Letters – Make a tactile letter for finger tracing. Write a letter on large paper. Trace with glue. Sprinkle with sand, salt, or rice. When dry, have your child trace the letter with his/her finger and say the name of the letter.

Rainbow Letters -- Write one letter on a large sheet of paper. Have your child rainbow write the letter by tracing over it with 4 or more colors of crayons or markers.

Letter Search -- Name a letter and ask your child to find as many different sizes, colors, and styles of that letter as possible to cut and glue onto a sheet of paper.

Which Letter? -- Write a row of different letters for your child. Say one of those letters and ask him/her to circle the letter you said.

Highlights -- Give some of your junk mail to your child and ask him/her to use a marker or crayon to highlight or circle certain letters. (exp. Highlight all of the Kk's orange, all of the Pp's purple, all of the Yy's blue, etc.)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sounds

Flashcards/ABC Picture Chart—Daily do a quick review of letters and sounds. Show the card and have your child either…say the letter name and the picture name; say the letter name and the sound; say the sound and the picture name; or say the letter name, picture name, and another word that would start with that same letter.

Sticky Letter--Make 3x5 letter cards. Make several of the same letter. Work on one sound at a time. Have your child find an object in the house that begins with that sound and tape the card to it. Keep it up for a few days so that your child can be reminded of the sound each time they see the letter card.

"I Spy" letter sounds -- "I spy something that begins with the sound of b." Or, say, "I spy a ____. What letter do you hear at the beginning of that word." This is great for waiting in line or driving in the car.

Brainstorm--Give your child a sound and ask him/her to think of as many words as they can that start with that same sound.

ABC tub games--Get a butter dish or small bowl. Gather several household objects that begin with the same letter sound and a few that don't. Your child must figure out which items begin with the same sound and put them in the bowl.

Search the House -- Your child can search around the house for objects whose names begin with a certain letter. (exp. B- bananas, brush, band-aid, belt, etc.)

Picture Sound Collage -- Ask your child to search through magazines, etc. for pictures that start with a certain letter. Have them glue all the pictures they find onto one sheet of paper to form a letter collage.

Tongue Twisters -- Play with tongue twisters-traditional or made up! They are fun and emphasize the initial consonant. (exp. Pink pigs play with purple pegs.)

ABC Memory—Find 1 picture that starts with each letter of the alphabet. Also, make flashcards, 1 for each letter. Play memory by asking your child to match each letter to it's corresponding picture. (exp. An apple with the letter Aa)