Learning Letters

My 22 month old is working on letter recognition and phonics.  We have letter activities all around the house.

B thinks it is hysterical when I pretend that our foam letter “H” is very hot.  I toss it up in the air and yell “hot, hot, hot!”  He wants me to do it over and over again.  And I do.  B has “H” and the word “hot” down solid because we made it a fun game to learn the letter “H”.  Now if we could just figure out “cold”.  It took me awhile to realize that B was saying “hot” and meaning “cold” when the weather turned cold and things like his car seat were very cold.

The point is that we try to make our letter activities a fun game.  This week we matched magnet letters in a muffin pan and integrated letters into the felt board.  B loves playing with his felt board.  I recently bought a set of felt vehicles.  I wasn’t sure how to make it a letter learning activity until this week when we talked about the first letter of each vehicle.  I wrote the letter on our chalk board and then B found it on our alphabet sheet.  B was very excited to find the letters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of our other letter activities around the house.  On our shelf I put out a small mirror with a few magnet letters on top.  B likes laughing at himself in the mirror.  We talked about the letter sounds that he found on the mirror.  Sometimes I hide letters in the purse shown next to the mirror.  B is working on zipping as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a basket of large foam letters.  I put the letters out on the floor and B finds the letters as I call them out.  I ask him to stand on the letters or hand them to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have a basket of small foam letters in the bathtub, along with numbers.  B likes it when I line letters up on the side of the tub and ask him to find them.  When he finds the right letter he throws it in the water and we yell “bye, bye D” or whichever letter we’ve picked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, like many families, we have magnet letters on the side of the refrigerator.  We also have a LeapFrog Letter magnets.  I have two set of alphabets for matching.  Sometimes I make a short word on the frig and B matches letters underneath mine.  I will also trace the letters onto an index card or piece of paper and B will fit the letters into my traces.  I try to put a picture of the word next to the word.  If the word is mom, I’ll put a picture or me.  Or if the word is sun, I’ll put up a foam or sticker sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also make Letter Tubs and Letters with salt or sand.

What are your favorite letter activities?