Literacy & ABCs
Move & LearnKindergartners9 Comments
I normally just wing it when it comes to doing learning activities with Henry. Just basing it off what I know he already knows and what I think should come next.
Henry has most of the beginning letter sounds down, so I rarely touch on it at home. We have here and there, but not a lot.
Since starting Kindergarten, we now get a list of weekly ‘tasks’ to do at home (all very hands on which I’m very happy with). One of them being to find things in our house that begin with the letters S, A, T, I, P, N, C, K, E , H, R and M (the prior week was the first half of these and now this week added on to those).
I didn’t quite follow instructions to do a scavenger hunt around the house, instead I made up a little game for Henry to practice beginning letter sounds.
I wrote those letters out on the driveway and began circling them.
Henry wanted to do the circling, so I let him finish that while I gathered some items from around the yard and from the house that began with those letters.
I tried to find as many as I could from each of the letters (I and N are extremely hard and I couldn’t find anything, E was hard too, but used an ear from Mr. Potato Head).
I set the objects at the end of the lineup of letters on the driveway. I grabbed my iPad to use as a stopwatch.
Sorting by Beginning Letter Sounds
The object of the game is to sort the toys and objects that I found from around the house by beginning letter sounds and set them in their correct letter circle, and to do it as fast as you can.
Another fun way to work on beginning letter sounds is with a letter sound toy wash!
I caught him with one mistake with ‘stick’ he put it in the C/K circle. I could hear him sounding it out and heard him focus on the /ck/ sound. I asked him to try again and he realized it was an /s/ sound.Henry did awesome!
The first round of the game he did it in just over 3 minutes.
When he had them all sorted, we practiced simple counting to see which letter sound had the most objects, a little comparison of less and more. The beginning /r/ sounds won by a lot with 5 objects. Some had 3, 2, 1 or even none. Henry made sure to point out there weren’t any for I or N! Whoops! (Seriously, what do I have that begins with them?!)
I then enticed him to do another round to try and beat his time and see if he could do it under 2 minutes.
He did it with flying colors! A minute and a half the second time around! Of course, he already knew the objects and what they began with. But he was definitely motivated to beat his time and was running back and forth.
Keep moving and learning with these activities from my co-hosts, and give Toddler Approved a big welcome to the Move & Learn series:
- A counting game at Simple Play Ideas
- Apple Bowling Math at Coffee Cups & Crayons
- Active number game with leaves at Toddler Approved
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Leslie says
Thank you SO much for this idea! My 6g and 4b had a blast! We did it in the living room and I had them go find objects (easy for my 6g and I helped 4b) while I did the dishes. I had them put all objects on the couch, then once we had a good pile they chose 1 item at a time and we talked about the sound and which letter it should go on.
Here’s where we added to your activity – My kids are always asking me to make up stories so we took turns choosing a letter and making up a story for all of the objects on that letter. They had SO much fun!
Clean-up was on my daughters mind as she looked at all the stuff all over the floor. I used your timing idea and we counted how long it took to put all the items on their letter away after telling their story. They had no idea they were being tricked into cleaning!!
We used 7 letters, it took up nearly an hour and my 4b who doesn’t know many sound/letters was doing great with most of the 7 after this activity. Throughout the day he would randomly ask what letter things start with and look at the floor to see if we had that letter. They are looking forward to doing it again with Daddy this evening!
Thank you SO much for all of your amazing ideas!!
Maureen says
Noodles, Nuts,(nuts as in nuts and bolts,,nails,nail brush, nail file,nylon stocking,net, needle (plastic), necklace,note,nest,napkin.
Ice cream cone,icicle(plastic)play iron,,igloo,insect,incense
Jamie Reimer says
Awesome ideas!!! Thanks so much for taking the time to brainstorm and share!
Amy Duncan says
Noodles for “N” and ice cubes or an ice pack for “I” it would just have to be a quick sort on the cubes since they won’t last long ;-).
Jamie Reimer says
Awesome Amy!!! I love the ice cubes idea! ;)
JDaniel4's Mom says
My son would love this! He loves the stop watch on my iPod. I am pinning this for later.