Age guide: 3 to 8 years. Pick one activity at a time.
Children meet letters more easily when they can touch, dig and hang them up. These eight ideas turn the alphabet into something to explore. They suit children who are learning to recognise their name, as well as those starting to spell small words.
Small parts and safety
Wooden, plastic or foam letters can be a choking risk for children under three if they are small. Pick larger letters. Supervise sand, scissors and sharp pencils.
1. Name soup
Time: 10 minutes. You need: a bowl, a spoon and letters for your child’s name.
Put the letters of your child’s name into a bowl. Ask them to scoop out one letter at a time and say its name, and its sound if they know it. Once the bowl is empty, they arrange the letters to make their name.
2. Dig for letters
Time: 15 minutes. You need: a tray of sand or a sandpit, a soft brush and wooden or plastic letters.
Bury a letter in the sand. Give your child a brush and let them be an archaeologist, brushing a little at a time. Ask them to guess the letter before it is fully uncovered. For a challenge, bury the letters of a short word and ask them to put it together.
3. Letter rubbings
Time: 10 minutes. You need: paper, crayons, and cut-out or wooden letters.
Place a letter under a sheet of paper and rub over it with a crayon until the shape appears. Take turns guessing what is coming up.
4. Letter collage
Time: 20 minutes. You need: large paper, old magazines, scissors and glue.
Write a large letter on a sheet. Your child finds the same letter in the magazines, cuts it out and glues it on. Stick the pages together to make a book.
5. Name tiles
Time: 10 minutes. You need: letter tiles or paper squares and name cards.
Put out tiles for the letters in each family member’s name. Ask your child to put together their name, or a sibling’s. A name card can be a guide if they need it.
6. Clothesline spelling
Time: 15 minutes. You need: string, pegs and paper cut into clothes with one letter on each.
For “sock”, make four paper socks with the letters s, o, c and k. Peg them on the line in the right order. Start with a word card for reference. It works with any theme, not just laundry.
7. The missing letter
Time: 10 minutes. You need: a magnifying glass, a highlighter, old newspapers or magazines and a sheet saying “Missing”.
Announce a missing letter: “It is a curvy snake that goes round once and back.” Your child searches for it using the magnifying glass and highlights each one they find. Use older newspapers that you do not mind marking.
8. Word relay
Time: 15 minutes. You need: word cards, three to six buckets labelled with the same words, and a hoop or circle.
Put the cards in a hoop in the middle of the room. Your child hops, skips or tiptoes to the hoop, picks a card, reads it aloud and runs to the bucket with the matching word. This works well with the short, common words in their reading book.
Keep an eye on feelings
If a letter feels hard, move on. Children often return to something they dropped last week. For a game of notes, see the family post office.
