Alphabet Activities for Preschool

Swat the Fly Alphabet Activity

Pick a card and swat the matching letter. Differentiate by having children match uppercase to uppercase, uppercase to lowercase, or letter sound to letter.

Letter Formation Alphabet Boards

Practice letter formation with these hands-on alphabet boards. Trace the uppercase and lowercase letter, write it independently, and then build it with play-doh.

Mix Them Up Small Group Alphabet Game

Children pick a card from the deck and produce either the name of the letter or the letter sound (differentiate based on the group). If they get it correct they can keep the card, if not it goes to the bottom of the deck. When you pull a “Mix Them Up!” card, everyone pretends to mix a bowl and all cards go back to start.

Build the House Letter Sound Center

Play construction worker for the day and build letter-sound houses! The base of each house has an uppercase and lowercase letter, children will find the door and roof that has images with that letter sound.

Lock & Key Letter Recognition

Place the keys with the correct lock by matching up the letters of the alphabet.

Mama Mia Pizzeria

Build a slice of pizza by finding the crust, sauce and cheese with the same letters on them.

Sunny Letter Sound Puzzles

Complete the puzzle by matching the image to the beginning sound of the alphabet.

Splat that Letter

A fun way to practice letter recognition. Look at the letter n the top of the page and find all of the matching letters. Take your play-doh and “splat” it onto the matching letters.

Pencil Puzzles

Build pencils by matching the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter.

Bubblegum Consonant Vowel Sort

Sort the alphabet bubble gum pieces by consonants and vowels.

Alphabet Clip Cards

Use a clothes pin to clip the letter that represents the beginning sound of the image on the card.

Sandbox Alphabet Activity

Practice letter formation with this fun and tactile alphabet activity. Children pick a card and then form that letter in the sand with their fingers

. It even includes a spinner so they can determine how many times they should write the letter.

Beginning Sound Boards

Find the missing beginning sound and circle it. For added fun, build the letter with play dough.

Popsicle Alphabet Mats

Practice letter formation by building uppercase and lowercase letters with popsicle sticks

Play Dough Letter Sound Cards

Build objects that begin with specific letter sounds out of play dough.

Cube Alphabet Mats

Build letters of the alphabet using snap cubes.

Alphabet Books

Student-made books for each letter of the alphabet! Children illustrate each page of their book with items beginning with that sound. You can add as many blank pages as you’d like.

Alphabet Dough Mats

Build uppercase and lowercase letters with play dough.

Guided Readers

The perfect guided reader for small groups, based on sounds of the alphabet.

Dab-A-Dot Alphabet Mats

Work with the uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet with these dab-a-dot mats. They can use bingo daubers, dot stickers, pom-poms and more!

Digital Lowercase Alphabet Activity

Click and drag the matching lowercase letters

Digital Uppercase Alphabet Activity

Click and drag the matching uppercase letters

Digital Letter Sounds Activity

Select the UFO with the correct letter sound

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If you’re looking for a fun alphabet activity that will help your students master the alphabet and letter sounds, then I’ve got you covered! These free alphabet printable letter books are an amazing learning tool for your preschoolers!

Alphabet Activities for Prek

While teaching the alphabet, there are a lot of different skills to cover. We need to master letter recognition, letter formation, and letter sounds. The best way to help your preschool students with this is to give them plenty of opportunities to practice, along with a mix of printables and hands-on learning.

At the end of each letter study, we create our alphabet books!

Alphabet books come in the shape of each letter. The cover shows an image that starts with that letter for reference. Following the cover are blank pages. You can print as many or as little as you’d like.

Children illustrate each page of their alphabet book with an image starting with that letter sound.

Free Alphabet Printable Letters in Action

Let’s take a look at my preschooler working on his letter B and C books.

After they illustrate and color their book, they can label their pictures. If they are not ready to sound out words, you can always write it for them. I like to write it in a highlighter, which allows them to trace it and practice letter formation and proper pencil grip.

I love this activity because the finished product is one that they can save and look at over and over again.

Children get to be creative while also practicing a key phonics skill.

At the end of our alphabet curriculum, we will have a full set of student-made books for letters A through Z!

These alphabet printable letter books are a part of our Alphabet Curriculum, but you can snag them for FREE here!

You Might Also Like:

• Hands-On Alphabet Activities
• No-Prep Alphabet Worksheets

Some of my favorite alphabet games and activities

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Alphabet Theme Centers for Preschoolers & Kindergarteners

Let’s talk about alphabet theme centers for our preschoolers! This is my favorite time of day because I am all about hands-on learning! Watching students interact with each other, become engaged with a task, and learn at the same time…I mean, what more can we ask for?

Fun Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers

Let’s start with letter recognition activities. These alphabet theme centers are perfect for preschoolers as they are learning to identify the letters of the alphabet.

1. Mama Mia Pizzeria Center

It’s important that children are able to identify both uppercase and lowercase letters. With this alphabet center, preschoolers can build a slice of pizza, by matching the crust, sauce, and cheese with all of the same letters of the alphabet.

2. Fly Swatter Letter Recognition Game

This is an absolute preschool favorite. Put out the fly alphabet cards and give each child a fly swatter (you can grab them at the dollar store). Pull a card from the instructor deck and say the letter name. Children then have to swat at the bug card that matches.

Differentiate this activity by producing the letter sound instead of just naming the letter, and then have children swat the letter of the alphabet that produces said sound.

3. Lock and Key Letter ID

Here’s another great alphabet theme center. Print the locks and place them on a gift bag or a basket, anything students can drop the “key cards” into. Children pick a key card and find the matching lock. They place the lock into the bag.

4. Pencil Puzzles

Children not only have to be able to identify the letters of the alphabet, but they also have to be able to distinguish between uppercase and lowercase and know which two go together.

One alphabet theme center we love for this skill is our pencil puzzles.

Children complete each pencil by matching the uppercase and lowercase letters. You can do this activity by placing all of the pieces on the carpet or tabletop. Or you can use a pocket chart. I prefer this method because it keeps things organized and I’m able to set up the first half of the puzzle in alphabetical order.

Here is what our pocket chart looks like before we start the alphabet center.

And here is what it looks like once my children have completed it!

Alphabet Small Group Activities for Preschool

Alphabet theme activities not only make great centers, but they also work well in small groups. Whether it be guided reading warm-ups, phonics groups, or intervention work, these next few alphabet activities are perfect!

5. Letter Formation Sandboxes

Letter formation is tricky, so it’s good to find multiple ways to practice. Below are our Letter Formation Sandboxes.

6. Sunny Day Letter Sounds

Now let’s talk about some alphabet theme activities for preschoolers that involve identifying letter sounds.

Sunny Day Letter Sounds is a puzzle activity where children have to match the letter to the picture that starts with that sound.

7. Beginning Sound Clip Cards

Clip cards are awesome because not only does it practice a given skill, it works on fine motor skills as well. Preschoolers have to look at the image in the center and clip a clothespin to the correct letter.

8. Beginning Sound Dry Erase Boards

Beginning Sound Dry Erase Boards are fun and also help children with identifying letter sounds and letter identification. There’s a picture clue and then the word. Except the word is missing the first letter. The board gives three options on the bottom for children to pick from. Two letters are incorrect and one is correct. If you laminate these boards children can use a dry erase marker to circle their answer. For extra fun I always have them then build the letter with play-doh and put it in the missing spot.

9. Build That House

Let children become construction workers for the day and have them “build” alphabet houses! The base of the house has a letter on it. Children must find the roof and door that have images that start with that letter sound.

Other Alphabet Activities You Might Like:

• Our full-year Alphabet Curriculum that provides everything you’ll need to create fluency with your preschoolers.

• No-prep alphabet worksheets
• Alphabet mats for centers
• How to successfully implement hands-on learning

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There are so many wonderful alphabet activities that can help children. As a part of our alphabet study, children work on identifying objects that start with that week’s letter sound. Once they’ve brainstormed their own list, they work on their Letter of the Week Take Home Book.

Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers

First, let me share some of the alphabet activities we do prior to our alphabet books.

We do a lot of great hands-on work. We use cubes to build our letters on our Snap Cube Mats.

We build items that start with our letter of the week out of play-doh. Here’s an example from our Letter A unit.

We also work on a variety of no-prep worksheets.

And to finish off our alphabet study, we create student books that each child can take home and practice with.

Alphabet Learning Activities for Preschoolers

Our alphabet books can be used in so many ways. Not only do they focus on the given letter sound, but they give children an opportunity to practice reading, sight words, and tracking (one-to-one correspondence).

When I introduce this alphabet activity, children are given each page. They trace the letter on the front cover and then color it in. Following that, children take a picture walk and name each object, focusing on the letter sound they hear at the start of each word.

Afterward, we read the text, focusing on tracking our words, identifying sight words, and hearing the letter sound. Children can color and cut each page so that we can staple it and form a true alphabet book.

Here’s a sneak peek of some of the other components of our

Alphabet Curriculum

All of these alphabet activity printables for preschoolers shown in this post are from the Alphabet Curriculum: Letter of the Week. You can see more about this curriculum here!

Looking for more alphabet activities for preschoolers (printables and hands-on)?

• Swat the Fly Letter Recognition Game
• Build that House Letter Game

• Splat that Letter Book
• RTI Letter Identification Pack
• Alphabet Dough Mats

• Digital Uppercase Letter Match
• Digital Lowercase Letter Match
• Digital Beginning Sounds

The post Alphabet Activities: Letter Books appeared first on Mrs V's Chickadees.

Teaching children the alphabet is a long process, so why not make it fun! These alphabet activities for prek are a great way to engage students while also practicing letter identification, letter formation, and letter sounds. Check them out!

Fun Alphabet Activities for Prek

I love activities that can be used more than once. These alphabet learning activities do just that! All I have to do is laminate them, and now they can be used over and over.

These make great literacy centers, work for fast-finishers, and intervention group activities. Children take a mat, and form the uppercase and lowercase letter using play doh. Each mat has one set of letters, an image that starts with that sound, and the uppercase and lowercase letter in a traceable font.

Another alternative is to use cubes to build the letters. Children take snap cubes and place them on the mat to create both the uppercase and lowercase letters.

My son loves these mats. He makes sure to match the cubes to the color on the mat.

You know all of those craft supplies you hoard and never use? I bet you have some popsicle sticks laying around. So why not have children build the letters of the alphabet with them?

Alphabet Books

Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers at Home

These alphabet activities for PreK work great for homeschool settings as well as classroom setting. Like these dab-a-dot worksheets. You can use a variety of manipulatives to fill in the dots on the sheets. My go-to items include pom-poms, dot stickers, and bingo dabbers.

Here’s an example of a sheet that was completed using dot stickers.

Here’s an example of a sheet that was completed using pom-poms.

All of these alphabet mats are a part of our Alphabet Curriculum, which can be found here!

Fun Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers

The last activity I’d like to share today is our Sound Mats. Similar to the above play-doh mats, this works with the child using play-doh. However, this time, they will build an item that starts with a specific letter sound. This alphabet activity is perfect for our prek students who are beginning to learn all of their new sounds.

Other Alphabet Activities

Repetition is key when it comes to learning the alphabet. Here are some other great letter activities for your preschool/pre-k and kindergarten children.

    Alphabet Worksheets                 Letter Sound Dough Mats            Splat that Letter

You Might Also Like These Posts and Resources:

• Free phonics pacing guide
• How to Successfully Implement Hands-On Learning
• Sunny Day Letter Sand Boxes
• No-Prep Letter Sound Worksheets

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Learning the alphabet is one of the first phonics skills you will teach your preschoolers. This is a lengthy process as it includes so many different aspects. Preschoolers need to learn to visually discriminate between letters, recognize uppercase and lowercase, learn how to write letters, and memorize all of the letter sounds. Below are some of my favorite alphabet activities for preschoolers, in the form of no-prep worksheets and printables.

Alphabet Knowledge Activities for Preschoolers

Letter discrimination is a huge part of learning the alphabet. This “I Spy” worksheet is great because it helps children practice letter recognition and also helps with visual discrimination between uppercase and lowercase letters.

Grab the full Alphabet Curriculum Here!

They must identify the uppercase letters in the first half and color them in, and then work on the lowercase letter on the bottom half.

Alphabet Books

Alphabet Writing Activities for Preschoolers

We also need to give our pre k students ample practice with letter formation. By sprinkling alphabet writing activities into their work, they can begin to develop fluency with not only letter identification but also letter formation.

Here are some printable alphabet activities for preschoolers that we love!

“Looks Like, Sounds Like” allows preschoolers to recognize the letter, trace the letter of the alphabet, and hear the letter sound.

Alphabet Review Activities for Preschoolers

A definite class favorite is our color-by-the-code worksheets. I personally like these alphabet printables because they work on reviewing more than one letter at a time.

Alphabet Activities for Letter Sounds

Alphabet Activities for preschoolers must also include letter-sound printables! Take a look at some of my favorite letter-sound worksheets for preschoolers.

Working with images is a great way for children to make the connection between the word and sound they hear at the beginning.

All of these alphabet activity printables for preschoolers shown in this post are from the Alphabet Curriculum: Letter of the Week. You can see more about this curriculum here!

Looking for more alphabet activities for preschoolers (printables and hands-on)?

• Swat the Fly Letter Recognition Game
• Build that House Letter Game

• Splat that Letter Book
• RTI Letter Identification Pack
• Alphabet Dough Mats

• Digital Uppercase Letter Match
• Digital Lowercase Letter Match
• Digital Beginning Sounds

The post Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers: Printables Edition appeared first on Mrs V's Chickadees.

When I first started teaching rhyming words in kindergarten I was shocked at how difficult students found it. So I gathered the best resources that included a mix of worksheets, centers, holiday themes, and more, and used them to help my children master rhyming words. Keep reading to see my top rhyming word products for kindergarten.

Rhyming Words for Kindergarten: Hands-On Centers

Peanut Butter Jelly Rhyme Time: Match the peanut butter side of the sandwich with the jelly side by finding the rhyming words. Once complete say “yum!”

Sweet Treats Rhyming Center: Build a cupcake by placing the rhyming picture of frosting on the correct base

Rhyming Puzzles: Build a three-piece puzzle by finding all of the rhyming images

Rhyming Word Worksheets for Kindergarten

Rhyming Worksheets: No-prep worksheets to help students become familiar and build mastery with rhyming words.

Digital Resources for Kindergarten to Teach Rhyming

Digital Circus Themed Rhyming Activity: Look at the image under the circus entrance and find the word that matches. Click and drag the yellow box over your answer.

Digital Google Slides Rhyming Activity: Look at the image and word on the slide. Click and drag all of the rhyming words into the box.

Digital Rhyming Boom Cards: Do you prefer Boom Cards over Google Slides? Then check out this digital rhyming resource for kindergarten.

I love incorporating themed activities into my phonics lessons. It’s an immediate way to engage students. Here are some of my favorite holiday and seasonal rhyming activities for kindergarten.

Frankenstein Rhyme Time: Match the Frankenstein heads by finding the rhyming images

St Patrick’s Day Rhyme Time: Match the rhyming shamrocks

Christmas Rhyming Freebie: This Is a great winter activity that you can grab for free!

More Phonics Ideas:

• Teaching One-to-One Correspondence: The first step to building readers is to help them understand the importance of one-to-one correspondence.
• Are you looking to teach CVC words? Check out The Ultimate Guide to CVC Words to get started.
• Improve your guided reading groups with these 5 simple steps!

The post 11 Amazing Activities to Teach Rhyming Words in Kindergarten appeared first on Mrs V's Chickadees.

This snow-themed preschool learning pack is a collection of fun and engaging math and phonics activities for preschoolers.

Teaching phonics and math through thematic hands-on activities is an excellent way to help preschoolers retain important information. Here’s a look at some of my favorite snow-themed learning activities for the winter months! They belong to my Snow Theme Pack, which you can purchase here!

Phonics Snow Activities

Beginning Sounds Phonics Mats

Practice identifying beginning sounds and forming the letters with these snow-themed cards. These cards are created to be used with play-dough. This adds an extra element of fun to the letter activity!

Salt Tray Alphabet Cards

Practice letter formation with this hands-on snow activity! Pour salt or sand in a tray or pencil case and have children pick a snowflake card. Using their finger they can practice forming the letter. There are uppercase and lowercase cards and recording sheets for both.

Match the Mitten Rhyming Activity

This rhyming game is great to use in a pocket chart or on the floor. Lay out one of the mittens and stack the others in a pile. Children pick a card from the pile and find the matching mitten by pairing up the rhyming pictures.

Snow-Themed Math Activities

Two Dimensional Shape Snow Activity

Practice identifying and forming 2D shapes with this fun activity. Using play-doh, children will use each card to help them form the shapes shown.

Count It Out Math Game

This snow-themed math game focuses on more than one preschool math skill. First, children pick a number card and must be able to read the card. Then, using manipulatives, children will count out that number and place the manipulatives on their mitten board.

Snowflake Addition

Preschoolers can practice addition to 10 with pictures by using these snowflake cards. Teach children to use manipulatives and pictures to help solve basic addition problems.

Snowball Number Identification

Have fun with number identification by pulling a number card and then finding all of the snowballs that match on your paper. I like using dabbers for this because bringing in a new supply to use always engages children instantly.

Snowman Ten Frames

Becoming familiar with ten frames is an important math skill for our preschoolers. This snow-themed ten frame game is a pre-k favorite!

You can grab this full resource by clicking here!

This resource also includes directions for some super fun snow projects and crafts. Here’s a peek at one of them but you can see more by checking out these blog posts below:

• Making a Snow Volcano
• Fake Snow that is Cold
• Snow Dough

The post 8 Amazing Snow Activities for Preschoolers! appeared first on Mrs V's Chickadees.

Word Work Activities That Improve Reading Skills

Word work activities are definitely my favorite part of the day. It is a critical part of our learning, and it truly lends to my student’s ability to grow as readers and writers. Let’s take a look at the importance of word work activities and ways to help our kindergarteners practice and develop phonemic awareness.

What is Word Work?

Word work activities can look different in different classrooms, but the concept remains the same. It is when we give students the ability to do hands-on work with different phonics skills. Word work can be an activity on beginning sounds, long and short vowels, cvc words, digraphs, word families, rhyming, and more. All of these things work together to help improve phonemic awareness. These skills are a necessity when it comes to reading and fluency.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Even if you don’t know what phonemic awareness is, you are most likely helping your students with this skill on a daily basis. This is when a child can hear and manipulate sounds. When a child knows their letter sounds, and they are able to segment and blend a word together, they are demonstrating phonemic awareness. This is the beginning stages of reading. Once a child can recognize that each letter has its own sound and they can blend sounds together, or take them apart, they can begin decoding.

Kindergarten Word Work & Phonics Activities

There are so many different ways to practice phonics through word work.  By using hands on activities you can increase engagement and help students retain the information and skills quicker. Let’s take a look at some ways you can begin to implement amazing word work activities to help your kindergartners master key phonics skills.

Word Work Activities for Letter Sounds

Using pictures is an excellent way to practice letter sounds. Word work activities that involve finding pictures with the same beginning sound are a great way to make sure students can hear each individual sound. One of my favorite word work activities for this is called Build That House.

With this game, students pick a house that has the uppercase and lowercase letters on it. Then they find the roof and door with pictures that have the correct beginning sound. This is a great hands-on word work activity to help students practice hearing and identifying letter sounds.

Word Work Activities for Beginning Sounds

The next step in building readers is to help them with beginning sounds. This is very similar to practicing letter sounds, but you can add additional challenges by having students also form the letters. I love to use Dry Erase Boards because it is not only engaging, but it also allows me to easily monitor student progress.

These are great because it encourages children to find the correct sound on the board and circle it, and create the letter with another manipulative. You can use playdough to practice letter formation or even letter magnets. I laminate these boards and have them use dry erase markers, which means we can use them over and over again!

Word Work Activities for Long and Short Vowels

Once my students have mastered consonant sounds, we move onto vowels. These are trickier to hear and pronounce. By incorporating hands-on vowel work, students can build fluency with long and short vowels.

We love the word work activity Vowel Caterpillars. With this phonics activity, children have to build the body of the caterpillar by finding the pictures with the matching short vowel sounds. It is a fun twist on a traditional picture sort.

It is also a great idea to use picture sorts for long vowel practice. Helping students recognize the difference between long vowel sounds is important to their reading ability. When it comes to long vowel centers, we love the phonics game Build a Sandwich. This game is perfect for any word work center or dramatic play area. Students must make a sandwich that consists of bread, tomato, meat, and cheese. Each of these items has a picture on them with a long vowel sound either in the beginning or in the middle of the word. Children can use the provided menu to help them, or do it all on their own. This is always a class favorite!

Word Work Activities for CVC Words

CVC words are our most practiced phonics skill. The reason for this is, if children can successfully blend sounds to read a CVC word, then they can begin to apply this skill to multisyllabic words. I invest a lot of time into building fluency with CVC words and it shows when we are doing guided reading! Some easy to implement, yet very meaningful word work activities include CVC Puzzles and CVC Word Building. These phonics games help students read and “write” cvc words.

Word Work Activities for Rhyming

When I progress monitor my students, I always find that many of them struggle with rhyming words. Being able to recognize and produce rhyming words is a key phonological awareness skill. Which is why it is so important to find engaging hands-on centers to help them practice this skill. Matching pictures that rhyme is awesome practice. This ensures that even non-readers can participate. It’s also great for children to practice hearing the rhymes as they say the names of the pictures out loud. Peanut Butter Jelly Rhyme Time is definitely a fan favorite! Students make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by finding the picture on the jelly side that matches the picture on the peanut butter side.

Word Work Activities for Consonant Blends

Consonant blends are easy to teach if you have spent a sufficient amount of time on letter-sound knowledge and cvc words. A consonant blend is two consonants together, that each makes their own sound. By helping students build fluency with common consonant blends, we are helping them build fluency with reading. This will make decoding longer words easier for them. Popsicle Puzzles are a fun phonics activity that allows children to find the correct beginning blend to each word. Picture clues help the students if they are struggling. I like to put the last half of the word in a pocket chart and the students will find the correct blend and add it to the beginning of the card.

Word Work Activities for Digraphs

Similar to consonant blends, digraphs consist of two consonants together. However, with digraphs, these two letters only make one sound. It is really important for children to know the difference because if they are trying to make each sound in a digraph, they will not be able to blend the sounds to make a word. Other than CVC words, digraphs probably are the second most practiced phonics skill in my room. I have noticed tremendous growth in decoding when students have memorized and built fluency with digraphs. We have a wide variety of digraph word work activities, but one I’d like to share with you is Dinosaur Digraphs.

In Dinosaur Digraphs, children take turns picking a dinosaur egg. Each dinosaur egg has a picture with a digraph either at the beginning or end of the word. They must place each egg under the correct digraph tree.

Teaching Phonics Activities

Teaching phonics to kindergarteners is absolutely key in their reading and writing success. Make sure to carve out time each day to teach and review phonics skills. Incorporate word work activities as much as possible. Hands on learning is extremely beneficial for the retention of information. You can read more about that here. If you want to integrate word work activities into your classroom but don’t know where to start, check out my full year of hands on phonics activities. This download consists of  35 weeks of phonics word work. The pacing guide lays everything out for you, so all you have to do is prep the materials and watch your students learn. As you work your way through each week, you will see your students reading and writing abilities develop and grow.

The post Word Work Activities that Improve Reading Skills appeared first on Mrs V's Chickadees.

So that is when I came up with a center idea that allowed my kids to do the same activities, but with individualized sight word lists. Once I implemented this new routine, I saw my students sight word knowledge increase tremendously. Here’s a sneak peek at the process and activities!

Kids are tested individually and given their own sight word lists. These lists contain only the words they have not mastered.

This post contains affiliate links. To read more about it click here

Here’s a list of materials you will need. You can follow the links to grab the items from Amazon!
*Soft Pencil Cases
*Markers
*Play-Doh
*Hard Pencil Cases: you can get these at Michael’s for $1 each
*Sand

*Alphabet Stamps
*Ink Pads

*All sections have detailed directions with pictures to help you correctly set-up and implement all routines and activities*

Don’t forget to pin this image so you can refer back to this post whenever you need!

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