You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when you are working on early literacy skills ( or any other type of skill) with your kids. You can make simple activities like this letter sounds matching and fit them in between coming inside from playing and sitting down for lunch. These are little snippets of important learning that add up but don’t overwhelm. In a classroom I would have this as an option in a center and encourage but never force children to try it. Start with only a few sounds and as your child masters matching them add some more. I always have a few “safe” options. These are sounds you know your child knows and will work to boost confidence and add some definite success to an otherwise challenging endeavor.
My daughter cracked me up with this activity… you’ll see why. When children go off book like she did run with it if you can.
Start by gathering the toys and writing out the letter that corresponds with the first sound in the word. That’s it for set up. Pretty simple eh? I did two sheets one with upper and one with lowercase letters. You can also mix up the letters all on one page. Once children are at this point of matching sounds they need to be focusing a lot of attention on lowercase letters. I let my daughter decide which sheet she started with.
Add your letter sound detective ( that’s what she called herself) and explain that all the animals are looking for their place on the paper. They belong on the letter that says the same sound as the first sound in their name. We did one together and she was off on her own. The only thing that made her pause was the walrus. ” Is this a seal or a walrus?”
Since she flew through it I gave her the second sheet. Then our babysitter arrived and my sweet and sassy little one turned on the performance. For the 2nd round of matching she decided to name the animals with first names and at first I was trying to get her back on track until I realized the names she was creating matched the letters on the page. Whoa!! She wasn’t just matching anymore now she was creating and being really funny so our giggles fueled her even more.
Awesome learning from an activity that took all of 2 minutes to set up.
Here are more than 50 more simple letter ideas for kids.