Easy Preschool Alphabet Activity

When I stopped teaching a little over seven months ago, I couldn't bear to throw anything away that could potentially be useful in the future.  (Come to think of it, this is true in all areas of life for me...a problem, you might say...)

The bad news?  The storage area of our basement is completely taken over by boxes upon boxes representing my seven years in the classroom.  (Sorry, Aug...)  :(

The good news?  Anytime I want to do an art project or learning activity with Jonathan, I just go shopping...in my basement :)

Today's activity came from a nearly-discarded box of foam alphabet stickers.

I had used these babies to label several items in my classroom and had been caught in a sad dilemma because all or most of the most common letters were used up, but couldn't bring myself to pitch the rest of the perfectly useful stickers.

Enter the boy.  He actually dug this box up in the basement and trotted it over to me one morning this week.  It suddenly hit me that it didn't matter that some letters were missing - it was the perfect, hands-on activity for him to practice his letter recognition!

I selected different uppercase letters and spread them out on the floor and handed him a piece of black construction paper (just for the nice contrast).

Before he picked up a letter to stick onto the sheet, I asked him to tell me the name and color of the letter.  Then, for kicks, I asked him what sound each letter makes.  (He actually learned all of the letters sounds before learning the letters names from watching Leapfrog: Letter Factory, which I highly recommend for introducing letter sounds!)

Peeling off the back of the sticker was a bit of a challenge, but he remained focused and determined to do it.  Some of them were a little tricky, so I gave him a little head start.

He then slapped the letter stickers on any which way he pleased.  In the future, I might draw lines on the paper and have him stick them onto the line so they face the same direction.  Since it was the first time we did it, though, I just wanted him to be free and have fun :)

The finished product!

Hamming it up

Since then, he has requested to "do letters" again several times.  I think we can call it a success! :)

Side note: the box of foam letters came also with lowercase letters.  Since he is still learning his lowercase letters, I waited till after he finished his project to pull some out to show him.

Hehe can you guess what he thought these were? (answers in the caption)

(The "v" was a "heart"...and the "j" he called a "saxophone"!) hahaa

I guess we know what to work on next! :)

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And, just because most of my recent posts have been very Jonathan-heavy...

Here is a gratuitous shot of our little gal who has been chomping down finger foods and army-crawling all over the house.

Have a great week!