We’ve started letter activities again because of the renewed interest of Vito with our language materials. Let me just share with you some of these activities in case you needed ideas on how to start a letter of unit activity with your kids.
Letter ‘a’ Object Basket
Language objects are a great way to learn letter sounds. I collected these through the years (8 years now) and honestly, I just dump everything in a large containers. When I need it, I would ask Mavi to sort out objects starting with specific letter so I can use it for Vito. Anyway, these are the objects we used for letter ‘a’:
Note, you don’t need a lot! Two or three would be fine, and if collecting these is too much work for you, you can always, always use real life objects around the house.
How we use these? Simple! During the first presentation, I asked Vito to sit with me on the table so we can explore the objects that has ‘aahh’ sound in the beginning. Then I take one object, say it’s name with emphasis on the beginning sound. For example, I take an apple… and say “this is an apple. aaah, aaahh, apple. Apple starts with ‘aaahh’ sound. I do the same with the rest of the objects.
Other days that we would work on these, he’s the one doing a presentation, like he would simply pick one object at a time and say the time with emphasis on the beginning sound. For example, he would pick the anchor and say “anchor. aah aah anchor. aah is for anchor.
You can play “I Spy Games” later on once the child has been exposed to multiple letter sounds.
Books Used
We are mainly using Moncure books for our learning letter activities. So here, you can see we are using My ‘a’ Book. But aside from that, we also read other fiction books for our Five in a Row. Around this time, Vito was loving How to Make an Apple Pile and See the World. This was actually the reason why we worked on the letter ‘a’ because the main subject is apple pie.
Writing Activities
I provided different kinds of writing opportunities for Vito. We do sandpaper letters, tracing mats/cards and random writing on a paper. Here are some of it:
Sandpaper and salt tray
Dot Activity Sheets. You can download this for FREE here.
Tracing Cards. I printed this material in 2 pages per sheet so it’s a lot smaller and can be assembled with a binder for portability.
A for Apples
This was the time when Vito and I were reading How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. Last year, we explored the life cycle of an apple so I decided that we will work on identifying the parts of an apple to go along with our Letter A activities (and skip life cycle for now). Vito loves apples, so he was very excited to work on this activity.
This part of an apple 3 part cards were from Montessori Print Shop. Mavi and I used these ages ago, and glad we I get to use it again with Vito. I only picked the simple parts so he can easily retain the idea.
Letter ‘a’ Activity Sheets
We worked on these maze sheets because Vito enjoys solving mazes.
Beginning Sound Maze. This is to identify the picture that begins with the letter ‘a’. This is not yet available in the shop (will upload soon!).
Find small letter ‘a’ in the maze. Vito loves mazes so he enjoyed this activity as well! You can get this maze activity from here.
At the end of our letter ‘a’ activities, we worked on this booklet. He loved coloring the pictures!! I was surprised that he diligently finished everything and was so proud after we assembled his book! We should try this again on our next letter.
By the way, he wanted to use these Crayola markers, I wanted him to try these pencils next!
What’s the timeframe for learning each letter?
We don’t have a timeframe it really depends on his progress and interest. There are times he can finish the activities in 3 days, others in a week or more.
We would also work on this cards to play sorting games of letter sounds.
What’s the order of your learning letters?
This idea was from Montessori Journey and I’ve been using this since 2010:
ramf-bitg
cusn-polh
dexqyjkwvh
But this is just my guide and my default selection. Mostly, we will work on a letter based on his favourite book, season or current interest.
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