I have done this skill a variety of ways in the past, but I have never done it with Mega Bloks! Preschoolers need to practice their letters a lot, a lot.....a LOT, so it helps to switch up the way you practice. In this activity, we not only practice letter recognition but also sorting, sequencing and matching. Win! Win! Win!
Materials
* As an Amazon Associate I may earn from qualifying purchases.
Instructions
1. Write both upper and lower case letters for every letter of the alphabet on sticky notes and stick to the side of the Mega Bloks.
2. SORTING- Randomly place all of the Mega Bloks on the surface and ask your child to sort the blocks into two piles, lowercase letters and uppercase letters. At this step, you can see if your child has any difficulties with certain letters or misunderstandings and then teach and review. For example, the upper and lowercase versions of i/l and l/L are often tricky... I even had a hard time figuring out a way to type that so that you could understand my explanation because those letters can look the same. Heh.
3. SEQUENCING- Once they have made their piles, I ask them to then put the alphabet in order. We usually start with the uppercase letters since they are most familiar with those. Variations here- look in the pile and search for letters in order (uppercase A, then B, then C) OR pick up a random letter and fill in your alphabet line as you go. This is challenging because they are filling in the holes. They have to think about the order. For example, they have two letters "F" and "S" lined up and then pick up the letter "K". They have to think...does it come before or after "F" and before or after "S"
4. MATCHING- After they have a line of uppercase letters, I give them the lowercase letters in a pile mixed randomly and ask them to build a tower with the matching letter. Tip- the second pile is random, but I still turn the blocks the same direction and place them in rows so that it is easier to visualize and find their letter. This time my son, started matching with the letter A and went in order through to the letter Z. Variation here, instead of matching the letters from the second pile in order A-Z, you could pick up letters randomly and match that way. This also ties in to the sequencing variation I mentioned above.
Why I like this
few materials
low to medium prep
kids love blocks and building
so many variations within this exact activity
letter recognition
letter matching
letter sequencing
sorting
I love ‘Alpha Match’ activities because there are SO many ways to do it. I originally saw this idea skimming through pinterest. I saved the pin from Planning Playtime.
Stay sane Mommas! We got this! Taylor
Comentários