Hands-On Activities for Improving Kids’ Letter Recognition is the second blog in a three-part series!

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Effective Letter Recognition Strategies for Kids, the previous blog , detailed effective letter recognition strategies you can use at home. You can learn about the effective strategies outlined in the first blog here. 

In this blog I focus on hands-on activities that are essential for helping your child recognize the letters of the alphabet.

Use Multisensory Activities to Engage Your Child’s Senses and Support Letter Recognition

Use Plastic Letters

Let’s start with plastic letters. Purchasing plastic letters is a good investment in your child’s education. Plastic letters allow your child to see and feel the shapes of the letters which simultaneously engage their visual and tactile senses. Starting with plastic letters is a component of multisensory letter instruction.“Simply put, using multisensory instruction seems to help build visual, verbal, and tactile/kinesthetic memories associated with letters” (Allen & Neuhaus, 2018,  p. 179).

Use an Alphabet Strip or Mat

An alphabet strip is a great way to help students match uppercase letters to their lowercase counterparts. You can start with having your child first match uppercase letters to uppercase letters and then progress to matching lowercase letters to lowercase letters.

Finally, have your child match uppercase and lowercase letters. “To develop letter recognition, students should be able to match uppercase and lowercase letters” (Bear et al. 2000, cited as in Honig et al., 2018).

Alphabet arcs arrange the letters of the alphabet into an arc that fits on a mat. My favorite alphabet arc can be ordered from Abecedarian ABC, LLC . A simple YouTube search will generate countless videos of teachers and students using an alphabet arc.

Use Play Dough to Form Letters

Play dough is absolutely one of my favorite hands-on activities for letter recognition. It engages your child’s senses and is just plain fun! While you can purchase alphabet cookie cutters and play dough letter stamps, I prefer to have my students form the letters with their hands. These play dough mats are included in my Kindergarten Alphabet Bundle. In addition to play dough, other multisensory options include sand trays, and Wikki Stix.

Incorporate Handwriting to Support Letter Recognition

“Letter writing practice focuses students’ attention on the particular features of letters’ shapes and thus reinforces letter recognition” (Allen & Neuhaus, 2018 p. 179).

My handwriting intervention begins with skywriting. I teach my students the letter strokes for the focus letter. Skywriting is kinesthetic as it involves whole body movement, and leverages a students’ muscle memory.

One example from my experience illustrates how muscle memory typically works. With my previous car, I had to put my foot on the parking brake when I parked. Last year, I purchased an car with an automatic parking brake. Months later, however, my left foot was still trying to depress a non-existent brake whenever I parked my car!

It is important to note that formal handwriting instruction supports letter recognition. Simply giving students trace and copy pages without proper instruction is not helpful. Handwriting instruction begins with focusing on lowercase letters as opposed to uppercase letters. Effective handwriting instruction deserves its own series and will be addressed more in-depth at a later date.

In conclusion, hands-on letter recognition activities are fun and engaging for you and your child.

Be sure to stay tuned for the final part of my effective letter recognition strategies for kids series. The finale will address strategies for students who continue to struggle with letter recognition will be addressed. 

Also Read:

Effective Letter Recognition Strategies for Kids

References:

Birsh, J. and Carreker, S. (2018) Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, 4th Ed. Brookes Publishing: Baltimore, MD.

Allen, K. A. & Neuhaus G. F. (2018). Alphabet Knowledge: Letter recognition, letter naming, and letter sequencing. In Birsh, J. and Carreker, S. (Eds.), Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, 4th Ed. (pp. 171-203). Brookes Publishing.

Honig, B., Diamond, L., and Gutlohn, L. (2018). Teaching Reading Sourcebook, 3rd Ed. Arena Press.