Mummyology

Do you have a wiggly learner in your house? If you’d like to use that energy to help them learn their letters and have fun doing it, here are 5 fun ideas!

1. Have them make the letters. I’m talking about having them put together shapes to form the letters. I used foam from the dollar store, but anything fairly sturdy would work, including laminated cardstock. I found these great free shapes at Confessions of a Homeschooler. My son still asks for these over and over again, except that now he’s building entire words instead of just one letter.

2. Let them feel how it’s done with sandpaper Montessori-style letters. Granted, this takes some time to prepare, but you’ll get years of use out of these and your scissors will get a free sharpening. 🙂 You can use these free templates I found at Montessori Materials for uppercase and lowercase. The easiest way to make them is still time-consuming: cut out the paper letters, flip them over and trace them in reverse onto the back of the sandpaper and then cut them out and glue onto cardstock or wood squares.. Use only the finest grade of sandpaper if you don’t want your children to lose their fingertips!

3. Get an inexpensive ball and write all the letters onto it with permanent marker. Throw the ball to one other, but each person must identify the letter their right thumb lands on before throwing it back. The added bonus is that this game tires them out a lot of the time too as the ball rolls off across the room, yard, or park.

4. Write the letters onto full sized pieces of paper and lay them randomly on the floor. You call out a letter and the child must step or jump to it. Another good one for tiring them out! If you’re studying a particular topic, look on Sparklebox or Twinkl for free alphabet printables in your theme.

5. When in doubt, break out the playdough! You can get fancy with free printable playdough letter mats to laminate, or just use a cutting board and ask your child to make letters as you call them out. Fine motor skills work and letter learning all in one – how can you lose? The smell of peppermint has been proven to increase congnitive function – add some peppermint extract to homemade dough!

What games and activities have you used to encourage letter learning?

– Erin

PS If you like the posts from me on Mummyology, consider coming over and checking out what we’re up to on my blog, The Usual Mayhem!