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This Reading Mama

Learning the Alphabet: Printable ABC Packs

By thisreadingmama 16 Comments

I’m so excited to share an alphabet series that my two year old has been using behind the scenes for the last few weeks!

It’s called Learning the Alphabet and is designed to help kids learn letters (upper and lowercase) and their sounds. It’s a “prequel” to Reading the Alphabet and contains the same kinds of hands-on activities.

Learning the Alphabet - ABC Printable Packs - This Reading Mama

*This post contains affiliate links.

Teaching Young Children the ABC’s

Before I share the specifics, I want to remind all of us that every child is different. The activities included each week were designed to make learning the alphabet hands-on, playful and interactive. Very few of the alphabet activities are “print and go” like you’d find in a workbook.

With that being said, please feel free to adapt the pages as you see fit for your child/students. Follow the lead and interests of your child. This is KEY, especially when teaching young children.

Although the packs are shared for free in ABC order, I actually recommend NOT teaching the alphabet in ABC order. For one, I like to start with the letters in this child’s name to make it more meaningful. This is especially important for reluctant learners.

You can read more of our tips for teaching letters and sounds here.

Learning the Alphabet no border

 

get-it-here-button

 

Learning the Alphabet Activities & Printables

**Please note that the activities share in this post are the activities in the FREE ABC packs. The Bundle Pack has been updated and expanded since this post, so it is more comprehensive. You can read about about the updated activities HERE.**

Today, I’m going to walk you through all the activities included in each of the free printable ABC packs There’s a lot of information here, but I’m hopeful it will be a helpful resource as you use these printables with your child/students.

Read about these supplies for Learning the Alphabet HERE.

1. Simple Alphabet Books

Each pack contains a little book that has a simple image and word below it. Six images are included for each letter. The books can be printed in color or in black and white. NSis really loves coloring, so the black and white is what she prefers.

printable ABC books for learning the alphabet

The books can be read over and over and are a fantastic way to build vocabulary with young children. By the 3rd or 4th time through, kids can even “read” it with you!

 

2. Alphabet Tracing Page

These are exactly like the ones you’ll find in our Handwriting Practice Pack, except they match with the clip art from Learning the Alphabet. NSis enjoys these, but we don’t spend a ton of time doing them. I placed all of them in plastic sleeve protectors and created a Handwriting Notebook for her. I let her pull out her notebook when she’d like to “play” with writing.

 

3. Alphabet Lacing Cards

In both upper and lower case letters, these cards include the six images from the Alphabet Books. I recommend printing these onto cardstock, laminating and hole punching along the edges to make alphabet lacing cards.

alphabet lacing cards for learning the alphabet

These cards are great for letter recognition, letter sounds, and hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. If your child is very young, be prepared to help her thread the lacing card.

 

4. Cut & Paste a Letter Sound

This activity features several different skills at the same time, namely cutting, gluing, letter recognition and letter sounds. The large block upper and lowercase letters can be adapted many other ways as well.

If you follow the directions on the printable, first the child cuts the picture strips for the letter. This is similar to the Cut & Pattern activities with Reading the Alphabet, our Pre-K/K Packs, and our Cut it Out! Packs {level 1} except the strips are a bit smaller for smaller hands. Our absolute FAVORITE pair of scissors for young learners is the Maped Koopy Spring Scissors. Seriously amazing because they eliminate a lot of the frustration for young learners.

cutting the strips from Learning the Alphabet

NSis is still perfecting her scissors skills, but she loves to try. {Notice my fingers are also in the photograph above. She still needs quite a bit of help.} I helps tremendously to print these strips onto cardstock so that the paper isn’t so flimsy.

 

gluing down alphabet picture cards on letters

Once cut out, the images are glued down around the letter. As you glue them down, name each picture together.

 

stamping letters

You can also take these blank letter pages and adapt them for what your child likes to do. NSis loves our alphabet stamps, so we stamped n‘s in the capital N.

 

5. Roll and Race!

Instead of your basic upper and lowercase sort, do a little rolling and racing as you climb the letter ladder. Such a simple yet fun game for teaching letter recognition.

roll and race the letters

Instead of using the letter cards pictured above, you could also use letter stamps, letter stickers or have your child write the upper and lowercase letters in the rungs of each ladder {for those who are ready}.

 

6. Letter Puzzles

These are simple letter puzzles containing the alphabet pictures with words. The cards can be cut by the child or cut ahead of time.

alphabet letter puzzles for learning the alphabet

Mix up all the pieces {12 pieces total} and let your child rematch them. They can also be reworked and glued down the next day. And if you want to make it a little more challenging, also cut the cards vertically to make it four pieces.

 

7. Roll and Match a Letter Sound

Rolling letter sounds has been a favorite of NSis. She LOVES our Photo Stacking Blocks and asks to play with the all.the.time. I knew these packs wouldn’t be complete without rolling activities. This one is also  very simple, yet is a great way to teach vocabulary.

roll and match a letter sound

For her, I print off the letter picture inserts twice. We take turns rolling {really, she throws and/or kicks them} and trying to match the pictures, like alligator/alligator.

To use the blocks for more letters, print off the images you need and insert the same number of images from each letter in each block. For example, if you wanted to compare three letter sounds, insert 2 letter images for each letter each of the blocks.

roll and match letters and their sounds

In the bonus material from the Bundle Pack, you’ll find letter inserts, so you can roll and match letters and pictures. More bonus material is shared at the end of this post.

 

8. Alphabet Coloring Pages

Yes, I did include an upper and lowercase coloring page for each letter simply because NSis loves to color.

alphabet coloring pages

Feel free to use it any way you’d like, such as letting your child paint the pages.

 

9. Alphabet Do-a-Dot Pages

My advice is to wait to use the Do-a-Dot paint markers with these because you can get multiple uses out of these pages if you

counters on alphabet do-a-dot pages

use counters or pom-poms with them

 

power magnets on alphabet do-a-dot pages

or Power Magnets {she worked this one 5 times in one sitting using the different colors of magnets, all of her own accord}.

 

stickers on alphabet do-a-dot pages

You can also use circle stickers.

 

alphabet do-a-dot pages

And, of course, Do-a-Dot Paint Markers. In this pack, you’ll find four different versions of these Alphabet Do-a-Dot pages. Simple ones like those seen above and harder ones featuring both upper and lower case letters.

 

10. Letter 10-Grid

We love grid games. They cover so many literacy and math objectives. You can read more about with our Alphabet Grid Games.

Alphabet 10-Grid Games

These are for younger children and feature numbers 1-10. You can re-label a smaller die or print off the 1-3 die template {seen in the image above} found in the bonus material of the Bundle Pack.

 

11. Alphabet Playdough Mats

These playdough mats are interactive, similar to our Alphabet Playdough Mats Pack, but also get kids to work on recognizing numbers 1-10 and one-to-one correspondence.

alphabet playdough mats for learning the alphabet

I always slip these into plastic sleeve protectors first. Draw a number card and add that many objects to the page with playdough, based on the directions. In the example above, the child is to add bubbles to the fish page.

 

12. Numbers Pages for 1-10

These number pages are also great for Do-a-Dot Paint Markers, Power Magnets, counters, stickers, or pom-poms. These are similar to the ones in Reading the Alphabet or our Pre-K/K packs, except they are for numbers 1-10.

numbers 1-10 do-a-dot pages

Place all the number cards in a pile. These are the same number cards used for the playdough mat. I HIGHLY recommend laminating them, as you’ll use them in every pack A to Z.

 

13. Number Cards 1-10

Included with each letter are number cards 1-10, which can be played with in many ways.

one-to-one correspondence with number cards

Read the number and practice one-to-one correspondence by adding that many objects to the card. Lay them on the floor and jump to the numbers.

 

putting numbers 1-10 in order

Place them in order 1 through 10. More ideas are included on the Number Card pages.

So there you have it! Whew. I hope that helps to explain what exactly you’ll find in every free letter pack of Learning the Alphabet. Remember you can grab the UPDATED BUNDLE PACK!

 

There’s an App for Learning Alphabet Sounds!

Alphabet Sounds Learning App - This Reading Mama

Alphabet Sounds Learning App has FOUR levels of interactive play designed to extend your child’s understanding of letters and their sounds. It will definitely grow with your little one!

 

 

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky

 

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Filed Under: Alphabet Activities

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Comments

  1. Maja says

    February 4, 2015 at 3:31 pm

    Becky, your are incredible! My daughter (2,5 years old today) LOVES Reading the Alphabet pack, but I’ve been skipping some activities because they were too difficult for her age, plus she’s bilingual so her vocabulary is building up slower but paralel 🙂 (to my delight). This NEW pack will be EXACTLY what she needs at this age. I can’t thank you enough. All the best.
    Maja

    Reply
    • thisreadingmama says

      February 4, 2015 at 4:19 pm

      Awesome! It sounds like you’re a great teacher to adjust your instruction to what she gets and doesn’t get just yet.

      Reply
  2. Carey says

    April 21, 2015 at 11:22 pm

    I love Learning the Alphabet!! My son (who just turned 4) has really enjoyed this! He was not ready for the Reading the Alphabet, so I was so excited to see this pack. I love all the literacy connections you provide in it, I feel like it just meets his needs perfectly right now. Every time I use this with him, I feel so good about all the good learning he is doing, and he loves it too because it is fun! Thank you so much Becky!

    Reply
    • thisreadingmama says

      April 22, 2015 at 9:20 pm

      Aw, you are so welcome. I’m glad your little guy is enjoying them!

      Reply
  3. Michelle says

    November 11, 2015 at 4:21 pm

    Can someone please direct me on the link I need to download these packs.. I keep going around in a circle??

    Reply
    • thisreadingmama says

      November 12, 2015 at 2:32 pm

      Look towards the end of this post and you’ll see images for all the packs. Click on any of those images and it will pull up the post with the free download it in. Hope that helps!

      Reply
      • Zainab says

        January 21, 2016 at 2:47 pm

        I love these packs too! I’ve been using them for my two and half year old and he enjoys them 🙂 I had found the printables earlier but seem to be having a hard time getting to them now. Clicking on the pictures just takes me to a larger image, not the download itself. Not sure if there’s a temporary glitch 🙁

        Reply
        • thisreadingmama says

          January 21, 2016 at 8:24 pm

          It’s fixed now. 🙂 Thank you for your patience.

          Reply
  4. Ashley Leonard says

    September 9, 2016 at 4:35 pm

    The links to download each letter seem to be missing. Or am I missing something? I’ve scoured the page and I can’t find picture or link to click on to download a letter pack. Help!

    Reply
    • thisreadingmama says

      September 10, 2016 at 11:08 pm

      Try–> https://thisreadingmama.com/free-abc-printable-packs/

      Reply
  5. Anne Mathieu says

    February 5, 2018 at 11:43 am

    I’ve bought 2 packs and I put them to trash by mistake…How do I recover these deleted items? Thank you!

    Reply
    • thisreadingmama says

      February 8, 2018 at 7:03 am

      Is there any way you can go into your trash can on your computer and recover them there? It’s not deleted completely until you delete the files in your trash. Feel free to email me at becky@thisreadingmama.com if you need more help.

      Reply
  6. Olena says

    March 23, 2020 at 12:32 pm

    thanks a lot for your job! it helps me with my little students. you’re amazing!

    Reply
  7. Learn Alphabet says

    July 23, 2020 at 5:40 am

    Thanks for sharing this
    Learn Alphabet

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Teach Your Child to Read at Home - Mom Inspired Life says:
    January 24, 2015 at 10:21 pm

    […] your child still needs to work on learning letter sounds, this free curriculum called Learning the Alphabet from This Reading Mama is a great place to start. It is fun and playful and will hold the attention […]

    Reply
  2. FREE Alphabet Lacing Cards (Instant Download) | Free Homeschool Deals © says:
    September 7, 2015 at 12:01 am

    […] alphabet lacing cards are a part of my larger pack, Learning the Alphabet, but this stand-alone pack of lacing cards was bundled exclusively for Free Homeschool […]

    Reply

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Hi! I’m Becky, a homeschooling mama with 4 blessings who keep me on my toes {and knees}. Before homeschooling, I was a classroom teacher (M.Ed.) and reading tutor. Read more about me here.

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