Originally, I didn’t start off by making them into alphabet displays. When my oldest was maybe 6 months old and we were practicing signing, I hung a few animals around the house….a frog, a deer, a panda, a wolf. When he would get a little fussy, we would walk around the house looking at all our animal friends and making the signs. It worked so well that if an unfamiliar visitor came over and wanted to hold him, I could pass him off and say, “Go show him the wolf.” Usually, he would be distracted from wanting me because he was so excited to see the animals.

Around his second birthday, I decided I wanted to put up an animal for every letter of the alphabet. I trimmed the calendar pictures to fit inside page protectors and used index cards and markers to make an uppercase letter to go with each picture. The original animal posters were taken from a couple of animal calendars my mother-in-law had given us. Obviously, there weren’t animals for every single letter, so I had to get creative and print a few pictures from Google Images to fill in the gaps. Ibex, anyone?

Here are the animals we ended up using based on the calendars we had.

A – Antelope

B – Bison

C – Condor

D – Deer

E – Elk

F – Frog

G – Goat

H – Hedgehog

I – Ibex (printed)

J – Jellyfish (printed)

K – Kangaroo

L – Leopard

M – Moose

N – Narwhal (printed)

O – Octopus (printed)

P – Panda

U – Urchin (printed)

V – Viper (printed)

W – Wolf

X – X-ray Fish (printed)

Y – Yak

Z – Zebra

Over the years, once my oldest became good at the uppercase letters, I went back and added the lowercase letters. These wall letter posters then stayed up for at least 7 years straight for my next 2 kids. I took them down for about a year when I got tired of looking at them after my third child mastered his letters, but then I put them up again for my youngest who has just recently mastered all his letters. Now is it is time they came down for good! Here are some of the ways we have used them over the years.

How to Use Wall Letter Posters

Visit the Animals

When my youngest was a toddler, I would carry him as we would walk around the house visiting the animals, especially when he was in a bad mood. Once I added the letters to the pictures, we just talked about that too. “What animals is this? Yes, it’s a frog! Ribbit, ribbit. Do you know what letter frog starts with? It starts with an F. Can you touch the F?” Simple, easy, effective. I didn’t do this with my youngest since I had taken the letters down and he was the oldest to finally master his letters at 5 and a half. My oldest knew them all by 3. My middle two kids were somewhere in the middle.

Hide and Seek

One of the easiest ways to use the wall letters is to just have your child go find a letter. You can say, “Where is the F?” If they need help, you can use warmer/colder style clues to direct them to the right vicinity. Once they are close, you can help them narrow down which one is right by giving hints like, “F says ffff. Which animal starts with ffff? Is it the fffff-frog or the guh-guh-goat?”

Another way to play hide and seek with the letters is to write the letter they are trying to find on a post-it note. Then they can move around the house carefully comparing the shapes of the letters until they find a match.

Treasure Hunt

This activity involves a bit of prep work, but the kids think it is so fun. Write each letter of the alphabet on its own index card or scrap of paper. Rearrange the letters so you have a stack of letters out of order. (Note: You do not have to use the entire alphabet…you can just write down a list of a few that you would like to practice that day.) The letter on the top of the stack is the start of your treasure hunt. Leave that one on your counter or taped to your mirror or somewhere to hand to your child at the start of the game. This is your “starter” letter.

Next go to your starter letter and tape the next letter in your stack near it, but facing the wall so the child can’t read the letter without taking it off the wall. This is the second letter in your treasure hunt. Go to this second letter and tape the third letter until you get to the end of the stack. When you reach the bottom of the stack you will have directed your child to the final letter. At this final letter, tape an index card with a direction to the “treasure.” I typically just hide a little plastic dinosaur then at the end tell the child where they can find the dinosaur. The last letter will have a message that says something like, “Look in the piano bench.”

This involves some prepwork, but it is worth it, because the kids love playing this game and don’t even realize that they are practicing letter recognition.

Mixed Up Letters

Once your child knows their letters fairly well, it can be fun to mix up some of the letters and see if your child notices. Put the N on the Moose and the M on the Narwhal and tell your child that a crazy alphabet goblin broke into the house and messed up some of the letters. This is a little bit advanced and honestly, my 5 year old still probably couldn’t do this, but if your child has mastered their alphabet and is familiar with their sounds, they will enjoy finding the mistakes!

These homemade wall letter posters might not be the most attractive part of your home decor, but I think they make it clear to your child that these squiggly things we call letters are actually pretty important. If you decide to put up some letters in your home, I hope you and your child find these activities helpful and enjoyable!

Related Links

Best Books for Kindergarten
Reading and Writing Activities
Pre-K Learning Activities

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As I mentioned in my multiplication star chart post, I have mixed feelings about star charts. I’ve never used them in the past. I’m especially wary of them when it comes to behavioral issues. I don’t want my toddler to think he’s going to be rewarded every time he behaves! However, I really feel like there is a place for them when it comes to the tedium of memorization.

I know my toddler is capable of learning his letters just through repeated exposure over a couple of years. If he loses interest in this star chart, we’ll definitely go that route, as it’s worked for my previous 2 kids. The most important thing for me is that he retains his love of learning. However, if he wants to spend a little focused effort to earn a reward just like the big kids in our house, I’m not going to stop him!

The way this chart works is that my son earns a star for every letter he can remember as I point to them. Once he can remember all the letters in a given row, he earns the reward for that row. One he completes the whole page, there is bonus reward for reaching that goal as well.

Occasionally, he might forget a letter he’s already earned the star for. To deal with this potential problem, I created a “probation” zone. Before he can redeem the reward for a given row, he has to show me that he still remembers all the letters that have stars. If he forgets one, I write it on a post it note and put it in the probation section. We wait about 15 minutes and then review those letters again.

So far he’s memorized about two thirds of his uppercase letters. Whenever we find a letter that’s particularly tricky for him, like G, I like to go the Measured Mom’s website and download some of her free printables. I’m especially fond of these free printable letter books. That way, when the bigger kids are taking turns reading aloud to me, he can have a turn “reading” to me too. “G is for grapes. G is for gumballs…” So far, it’s worked like a charm.

Once we go through the charts and he recognizes all the letters, we might go through them again and focus on the sounds each letter makes.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten
Time Required: ~5 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable. Optional: A couple dollars for foil stars (with a bunch left over)

Materials:

• Paper for printing alphabet star charts.
• Foil Stars (optional: could also just put checks or draw happy faces)

Instructions:

1. First, print the alphabet star charts.
2. Next fill out the rewards. You could use the same reward for each row or choose something different. For mine, I used a combination of food treats (such as candy and ice cream), media usage (like watching tv and playing on my tablet), and activities with a parent (like playing a board game or cooking). When my son completes the entire chart, I plan to give her $5 to spend on a toy. Do whatever you feel comfortable with!

In case you’re interested, be sure to check out the sight word star charts and multiplication star charts I made for my older kids.

Enjoy!

Click here for more Letter and Letter Sound activities and printables for kids.

Related Links

Letters and Letter Sound Activities
Best Books for Kindergarten
Learning Activities for Kids

The post Alphabet Star Charts appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

This letter matching game is very simple, and it doesn’t seem like it would be much fun, but even kids that in general don’t seem to be interested in learning letters seem to like matching these cards. I think this “game” is best used when the child is fairly confident with the uppercase letters and still learning the lowercase. The way I normally use these cards is by taping up the uppercase letters in a line on a wall (neatly and in order) and then taping the lowercase letters nearby in a random jumble. The child then has to move all the lowercase cards to the spot underneath the corresponding uppercase letter. I’ve found that if you sit by and watch instead of helping, the child is often able to correct their own mistakes as they go. You can also play with the cards using standard “Memory” matching format.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten
Time Required: ~1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $5 in used supplies

Materials:

• 26 index cards
• markers
• contact paper

Supplies & Tools:

• scissors
• paper trimmer (or scissors, ruler, and pencil)

Instructions:

1. Use the paper trimmer (or the scissors, ruler, and pencil) to cut the index cards in half
2. Write each of the 26 uppercase letters on 26 cards in one color.
3. Write each of the 26 lowercase letters on 26 cards in a different color.
4. “Laminate” the cards with contact paper. (Alternatively, use a laminator (Affiliate Link).)
5. Trim the cards leaving a small laminated border around each one.

Now you’re ready. Tape the cards on the wall as described above and shown below, or play a “Memory” game with the cards by laying all the cards upside down in a grid and take turns flipping over 2 cards and trying to make pairs. I haven’t tried it, but you could also use the cards to play your own homemade version of letter go-fish.

Related Links

Best Books for Preschool
Pre-K Learning Activities
Best Gifts for 4-Year-Olds

The post Homemade Letter Matching Game appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

In general, I don’t really think “flash cards” are useful tools to teach little kids anything (though I relied on them endlessly in college and grad school). The idea of drilling children to get them to memorize something doesn’t appeal to me. However, my son really enjoyed looking at these cards when he was a toddler and I liked making them. We’d look at them and talk about the letters whenever we were passing time away from home (restaurants, waiting rooms, etc.) and then try to find letters on signs. By the time he started preschool just before he turned 3, he knew all his upper case, all but maybe 5 lower case, and most of his letter sounds. All without feeling like we’d ever made an effort.

Recommended Age Range: Baby/Toddler, Preschooler, Kindergarten
Time Required: ~1-2 hours (not counting time to find a good picture of each letter which took me about 3 hours)
Difficulty: Super Easy (except finding pictures of some of the letters)
Cost: Around $5 in used supplies (Contact paper is a little expensive for a roll (~$6), but very little is used. Had I had my laminator (Affiliate Link) then, which I love, I might have used that instead, but it still would have been not much more than $5 total in used supplies. Also, this is assuming you can get the magazines and pamphlets for free. If not, I recommend printing pictures from online image galleries, which is less fun.)

Materials:

• magazines/pamphlets/brochures/etc.
• twenty six 4″x6″ index cards
• contact paper
• markers

Supplies & Tools:

• scissors
• glue

Instructions:

1. Cut out magazine pictures of objects your toddler will recognize for each letter of the alphabet
2. Glue the picture of each object onto one side of a 4″x6″ index card.
3. Write the appropriate upper and lower case letter on the other side of each index card.
4. Cut out 52 pieces of contact paper at least 5″ by 7″ (precise dimensions not important, because it’ll be trimmed).
5. “Laminate” the cards with the contact paper (or use a real laminator if you have one).

Related Links

Best Books for Preschool
Pre-K Learning
Craft and Play Recipes

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