About three years ago, I developed Learning the Alphabet, which includes lots of hands-on alphabet activities for little learners. The target age was older toddlers / younger preschoolers.
My youngest daughter was three years old at the time and was into everything. I needed to create something to stimulate her or I would go insane. Because of her age, I knew that giving her worksheets wasn’t appropriate. So I developed hands-on alphabet activities that would keep her engaged in learning her letters.
Fast forward three years. I’ve worked hard on updating and expanding those activities for your little learners…including more alphabet activities geared towards preschoolers. {The new bundle will be available September 6th!}
*This post contains affiliate links.
**The FREE alphabet packs from the original Learning the Alphabet are still free! They are different from the newly updated alphabet activities you’ll see in this post.
Before we jump in too far, I’d like to share a few thoughts about teaching the alphabet to little learners.
1. Believe it or not, not all toddlers and young preschoolers are interested in a formal school-like time of learning. (I know. Complete shocker!) All four of my own kids were, but I followed their lead and fit it to their interests as they learned.
2. Even if you have a highly interested child, learning time that takes too long or includes too many worksheets can lose (or even destroy) their interest. Learning for young children needs to be hands-on and interactive. This means instead of mainly using worksheets, we play with letters and letter sounds.
That’s why you will find many hands-on, interactive learning activities in these packs. This does mean the prep time will take a little longer, but it’s so worth it for the young learner.
3. While these packs lend themselves to more of a “letter of the week” type set up, learning letters should not be limited to just one letter a week.
Multiple and meaningful exposure to letters can happen any time of the day with a cereal box or a favorite store, like I talk about in my post about teaching toddlers the alphabet.
4. For most children, the letters in a child’s name are the most important letters to them. If you’re able to start by learning the letters in their name, you’ve got some interest already built in.
5. Don’t get hung up in the age-old argument of teaching letter names vs. letter sounds. Some philosophies teach that learners only need to know letter sounds. Reading researchers such as Adams, Ehri, Roberts, Bear, Templeton, Invernizzi, & Johnston say that letter names are just as important.
In my experience teaching young learners, letter names are easier and less abstract to learn at first. With all that said, don’t get bogged down in which one is ”right.” Just have fun with letters!
Hands-On Alphabet Activities for Little Learners
Each alphabet activity pack has the same activities in it as you see below. I’m just giving you a taste of what’s in each for the letter Aa. ALL color activities are also included in blackline. {There’s a lot, so keep on scrolling!}
I’ll link to the supplies we use for each activity, but you can find them all here.
I hesitated to even include this, but I get SO many emails asking for a little more direction when planning instruction with the hands-on alphabet activities from Learning the Alphabet. So I’ve included a list of activities broken down by 1- Letters & Letter Sounds, 2-Fine Motor Skills, and 3- Math Skills.
I’ve included an example of how you could break down the activities into 5 days {seen above} as well as a blank planning sheet for each letter. I DO NOT recommend copying my example sheet as all learners are different!
Every letter comes with a “teacher copy” book {larger} and a smaller learner copy book {seen above}. It features a title page, six picture with the word, and a letter coloring page on the last page.
Grab your favorite pocket chart and do some sorting or just name each picture. Every picture card can be printed front/back so they have the word on the back.
Get kids working on their fine motor skills with clothespins while reinforcing letter sounds at the same time! The alphabet clip cards only contain pictures that start with the featured letter. The idea here is to practice listening for just the short /a/ sound in the words as learners name each picture.
These cut and paste letter sounds have been a HIT for years with readers. I’ve include both uppercase and lowercase pages for each letter of the alphabet. The bonus section of the updated bundle has a cover page that you can use to create an alphabet cut and paste book with all the letters.
These new alphabet crowns are super fun for reinforcing the letter and its sounds! Two versions are included. A just print and staple crown {seen above} and a cut and glue crown are both included {great for fine motor skills}! Room is included for adjusting the crown to fit larger and smaller heads.
Printable lacing cards are a fun way to work on letter recognition, letter sounds, and fine motor skills. An uppercase and lowercase copy are available for each letter. I highly recommend printing them onto cardstock so they’re nice and sturdy.
I’ve included several different {and new} tracing pages with this update. I recommend them for preschoolers. I do not recommend tracing pages for toddlers unless they just really like doing them, like my toddler did.
A simple coloring page has also been included that you can choose/not use with very young learners.
Kids LOVE scavenger hunts! And this letter scavenger hunt is perfect for little learners! Just “hide” the alphabet picture cards all around. Learners search for and find each one. As they do, they cross it off their board. It’s such a simple, gross motor way to work on letters and their sounds!
Printable dice that you can fold and glue yourself are in each letter lesson, but I’ve also included inserts for the pocket cubes {seen above}. All my kids LOVED these pocket cubes when they were little {and we still use them!}.
I like that they are soft and quiet. Plus you can completely customize the dice to include any letters or alphabet pictures you want with the inserts.
The cut and glue/tape alphabet die {seen above} can be used with picture cards or with this Roll & Race Game.
Just one change of the game and it’s perfect for preschoolers ready to do some letter tracing. Put the letter inserts into a dry erase pocket to make it reusable with dry erase marker.
There are several alphabet dot pages included in each alphabet packs. This uppercase and lowercase page can be used over and over again if you use transparent counters or power magnets.
Watch the quick video of my three year old rolling the pocket cube and covering up the “big E” from our older pack. This was a favorite activity of hers for all the letter packs.
Learners can also use dot paint to “paint” the letters.
Another dot paint option is the uppercase and lowercase letter dotting pages. Three different pages are included with this one: 1- uppercase only, 2-lowercase only, and 3-uppercase and lowercase {like you see in the picture above.}
Dot pages are also included for numbers 1-10 and 11-20. Learners flip over the number, and then find and dot it on the page.
1-10 and 1-20 grid games are fun to play and work on left to right progression, like kids use in reading. Learners can cover up the squares or dot them. Dice inserts are included for the pocket cube as well as a template for a 1-3 die you can assemble yourself.
My learners all loved playdough when they were younger. Two playdough mats are included for each letter. One that mixes in some math…
and one that gets kids creating the letter and objects that start with that letter with playdough.
Mini alphabet posters are included for each letter {the size of half a page}
as well as alphabet poems that I’ve written. These poems are unique to Learning the Alphabet.
Lastly, there are some number cards from 1-20. Learners can line them up to practice counting among other things
like counting and attaching links to the cards.
When you grab the Bundle pack, you also get BONUS PRINTABLES such as alphabet clip cards {some editable}, editable Alphabet Blackout games, wall cards, and MORE!
All of these alphabet activities can only be found in my NEW Learning the Alphabet Bundle Pack {coming September 6th}! Grab a copy for your learners today!
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Purchase from my Teachers Pay Teachers Store
Enjoy teaching!
~Becky
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