Activities for letter recognition

10 Letter Recognition Activities - Days With Grey

The curiosity about how to teach letters to your child is such a hot topic! Learning the alphabet unlocks so many new doors, and letter recognition is the foundation of early literacy. 

“How do I teach my child the alphabet,” is one of the most commonly asked questions. What we have learned in more recent studies is that helping our children hear letter sounds and watch our mouths when we form letters is more important than memorizing. Learn why hands-on learning is important for child development and easy ways you can set up ways to practice. 

Here are 10 letter recognition activities for toddlers and preschoolers. Recognizing a letter can happen in four forms; uppercase print, lowercase print, uppercase cursive, and lowercase cursive. To better understand reading development, read our article, A Parent’s Guide to Phonemic Awareness.

This article will look closely at alphabet recognition and how you can help your child learn the letters. – All through hands-on play, of course!

RELATED: Here are five ways to incorporate reading readiness into your daily routine with toddlers, preschoolers, and big kids.

What Is Letter Recognition?

Letter recognition is the ability to identify letter names, recognize what a letter looks like, recognize how a letter sounds, and how notes come together to make blended sounds. 

The alphabet does not need to be taught in a specific order; however, many believe teaching should begin with the most common letters. For example, T, L, and M will be taught before X and Q.

I like to begin with the letters in my child’s name. 

Activities on Demand

Want great ideas without the ads? Download these 20 hands-on learning games for kids.

Why is Letter Recognition Important?

By Kindergarten, children learning under the Common Core will be asked to recognize and remember lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Let’s remember that we have plenty of time to build solid foundations of what letters look like, what they are called, and what sound they make. 

In preschool, we want to respect this time and introduce letters with lots of room for learning through play and exploration. Exploring the letter names, what a letter looks like, letter sounds, and letter relationships take time to develop! 

RELATED: 101 preschool activities to use throughout the year!  

Typical Stages of Letter Recognition:

1. Letter Names: Understands letters have names.
2. Identify 10 Letters: Can identify ten letters, including their name. This is when they also begin to recognize their name in print.
3. Case Differences: Begins to identify lowercase and uppercase letters.
4. Letter Sounds: Develops a more in-depth understanding that letters stand for sounds.
5. Mastery: Masters all letter sounds and can identify letter names.  

RELATED: Alphabet toys are a great addition to toys toddlers and preschoolers use daily! 

How to Teach Letter Recognition:

• Start with the letters in your child’s name: These letters will have meaning, and your child will be invested in wanting to remember them. Begin with these 15+ Name Activities.
• Show how the letter is formed: Is it a straight line? Curve? Do you recognize a point in your letter? 
• Read ABC books: Here is an excellent list of ABC books from Happily Ever Elephants.
• Use a poster: Write your child’s name on a poster and hang it in their room. Decorate posters with the letters of the alphabet. Hang them at eye level.
• Magnetic letter play: Play with magnetic letters so they can be creative and get comfortable with letter recognition.
• Songs: Sing songs about the alphabet.
• Sound and picture: Match letter sounds with pictures.
• Play games: Letter cards are great for recognition learning (and fun!)
• Make ABC books: Have your child stamp, and you write the words.
• Relate letters to people they know and love: Share and begin to recognize the names of family and friends. 
• Sound it out: Talk about how the letter sounds. H, hat, /h/.
• Write it out: After much practice with fine motor skills, begin to write the letters. 

10 Activities to Introduce, Improve, and Practice Letter Recognition. 

Now more than ever, parents are stressed about doing too much. According to this survey that shares the impacts of the pandemic on young children and their parents, the frequency of parents reading to children and indoor play has dropped.

Parents are more likely to rely on screens because it is a way to decompress after a long work day. (No judgment, it is impossible to do all the things. I feel it too.)

This letter recognition post is intended to share low-prep activities to bring back hands-on learning through play that will feel as easy to set up as relying on digital devices.

RELATED: If you have a toddler just starting, begin with these quick and easy letter recognition activities that use two letters simultaneously.

Rock Letters Alphabet Activity

This easy alphabet idea comes from our activity cards set one. Gather some black rocks from the dollar store and write a few letters on each one with a white permanent marker. Have your toddler or preschooler practice with the first letter of family members’ names. Next, try playing with all the letters in your child’s name.

Alphabet Sort; Straights and Curves

Did you know that letters have curves, straights, slants, tunnels, and dots? I didn’t either until it was pointed out to me. Seeing and recognizing this is the first step to writing the letters. Let’s pay attention to how a letter looks before putting the pencil in their hand and asking a child to write their name.

Letter Poke and Find

Grab your muffin tin! This alphabet surprise game is a hoot. Put letters in the muffin tin and cover with tissue paper. Your child plays by poking through the tissue paper and recalling the letter name pulled. This is a great risk-free way to ask your child which letters they recognize without the stress of flashcards.

ABC Bean Sensory Bin

Beans are a hit for sensory play. Bury a few plastic lacing letters and invite your child to dig in. Grasping these small letters will help with fine motor development and stimulate the senses for more learning!

RELATED: Does your child enjoy sensory play? Check out these 40 sensory bins for kids.

Letter Recognition Drive and Park 

Curious about which letters your child knows but also wants to tread lightly? Good call! I also don’t enjoy being interrogated. Your child drives each car to the correct parking spot as you call out letters for this letter recognition activity. If your child is new to learning letters, use less. We can add on more letters as your child develops.

Find your Name

Cheers to a classic name activity. (you can also find it in this 15+ name activities for kids post). Write the names of family members throughout the paper. Next, invite your child to find their name on the giant poster and circle it. This is an excellent way to prep for writing and hold a steady hand as your child circles each name.

Splash the Alphabet

When the weather warms up, head outside to splash the alphabet. For this idea, I like to take a back seat with a large seltzer and show my child a letter card. We talk about the letter name and the letter sound; then, he is off to splash it with colored water. This is a BIG win – especially for reluctant learners.

Write with Magnets

We made this magnetic board years ago, but never underestimate a cookie sheet! Make a large letter using tape and have your toddler or preschooler follow the lines with transportation magnets or race cars. This letter activity is a fun prewriting activity to practice the lines and curves of letters.

RELATED: Ready to write? Here are the stages of writing development.

Fine Motor Letter Grab

Let’s put those lacing letters to good use with another activity. Here, your child will fish the letters out from the pond and color-sort them when finished. As I sip my hot tea, my preschooler and I chat about the letters he grabbed. Skills practiced are fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, letter recognition, and color sorting. Phew! Can you believe all that in ONE idea? Five stars.

Alphabet Bingo – with a twist!

Remember bingo? Here is how your child can play solo. Grab some letters and place them in a tissue box. Write the letters you picked on the paper. Invite your child to dig in the box and try and get five in a row to win. This makes a fantastic morning activity we like to call Breakfast Invitations.

Kindergarten Word Families

As your child begins to put sounds together, head to this Kindergarten word family post for a list of consonant, vowel, and consonant words. We call these words CVC words or word families. Invite your child to think of words in the -at family by changing the beginning sound. If it is a word, try using it in a sentence. Toss the letter into the nonsense word dish if it makes a nonsense word.

Another great activity for Kindergartners to explore beginning sounds is this picture and sound match-up we played with my five-year-old.

More Letter Activities

• Alphabet Ice Sensory Play
• Giant Alphabet Dot to Dot
• Writing Letters with Race Cars

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you teach the alphabet?

Start with the letters in your child’s name. These letters are familiar to children, which makes them more invested. Children who feel connected to learning are more likely to take risks. Use these 15-name activities to get started.

What if a child struggles with memorizing letter names?

We can take a step back when a child struggles to memorize letter names. Begin talking about the letters you notice in your environment and invite your child to play with the letters in their name. Take learning letters slow to honor your child’s pace. Meet your child at the stage they are by identifying a few letters at a time. Add more letters as your child develops.

My child is ready to read. What next?

When children show reading readiness, we want to model what our mouth looks like when saying the letter sound. Begin talking about how our voice box vibrates (or doesn’t) when making the letter sounds. Bringing attention to these details will help your child decode words as reading becomes more complex over the years.

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Alphabet Letter Identification Activities - PreKinders

Here are 15 fun, active, hands-on alphabet letter identification activities for Pre-K, Preschool, and Kindergarten.

You can find many more Alphabet Activities here.

Letter Basketball

This is one of my prekinders favorite letter identification activities every year. To prepare this game, I cut copy paper or newsprint paper in half, and write letters on several pieces. I make enough papers for each child, plus one or two extra. I make a line with masking tape on the floor and place the trash can about 4 feet away. As each child has a turn, I tell them which letter to find. They pick up the letter, crumble the paper into a ball, and stand on the tape to toss it into the trash can. If they miss, they get as many chances as needed to get the “ball” in the basket and can move closer if needed. We always cheer when they make it in the basket! This game could also be played with alphabet bean bags if you have them.

Candy Letter Match

Write pairs of letters on sticker dots and place them on the bottom of several Hershey’s Kisses. For my Pre-K kids, I usually put out about 5-10 pairs of letters at a time. Children take turns lifting two Kisses at a time. If the letters match, they keep those Kisses. If they do not match, they have to put them back. At the end of the game, all of the Kisses are put in the middle of the table, and children can choose about 3 pieces to eat. We use this game to practice matching uppercase to uppercase letters, lowercase to lowercase, or uppercase to lowercase, depending on what we are working on.

Alpha-Band

Label each rhythm instrument with a letter. An easy way to make instruments is to put rice inside a plastic Easter egg, and hot glue it closed. We sing the traditional Alphabet Song, or another alphabet song, such as Dr. Jean’s “The Alphabet’s in My Mouth” or “Who Let the Letters Out”, or Jack Hartmann’s “Animal Alphabet Cheer”. Children shake their letter shakers only when they hear their letter called out in the song.

Letter Hunt

Children choose any 10 letters from the letter manipulatives (use foam letters, magnetic letters, letter tiles or other letter manipulatives). Go through a stack of shuffled letter cards, calling out each letter to the children. As the letters are called out, children look to see if they have that letter, and if they do, the letter is put back in the letter basket. We see who is first to clear all of their letters. It’s very similar to a bingo game. In Pre-K, we play until everyone has cleared all of their letters because our goal is learning letters, not competition with the little ones.
*To teach letter sounds: Call out a word and have children identify the first letter of the word.

ABC Sorting Tray

I found this divided tray in a kitchen store. I labeled each section by writing a letter on a sticker dot and placing the matching foam letters in each section of the tray. I placed the letters in a bowl and children sorted and matched the letters into the sections of the tray. When I want to change out the letters in the tray, I just remove the sticker dots and add new ones. I usually try to use letters that are similar, so that children are challenged and use visual discrimination skills to find the differences in the letters. For example, I might use Q, O, D, C, and G since those letters are similar in shape, or I, T, J, or W, V, U.

ABC Sorting Box

Label a craft storage box with letter stickers. Children sort letter manipulatives into the sections of the box. These are magnetic letter tiles in the picture.

Letter Matching Uppercase to Uppercase

For this activity, each child chooses a colored letter box. Children work in pairs to match the letters that are the same. These letters came from a set of foam letters that are sadly no longer available from Lakeshore (bring them back, Lakeshore!) However, you could do the same activity by using handmade cards with the letters written in two different colors. You might also consider using paint chips (paint sample cards) in two different colors and making A-Z sets in the two different colors by writing on the cards with a black marker.

Letter Matching Uppercase to Lowercase

Children work in pairs to match the uppercase and lowercase foam or magnetic letters that are the same. You could also use purchased or handmade letter tiles.

Stamping Game

Write about ten letters on a piece of paper for each child. Put the same ten letters in a bowl or bag, and pass it around the table. Each child has a turn to pull a letter out of the bowl or bag, and announce the letter to the group. Children find the letter on their paper and stamp it out with a rubber stamp.
Other ways we play this game:

• I put every letter of the alphabet in the bowl or bag and children determine if the letter is on their paper or not.
• I place small objects in the bowl and children identify the beginning letter (e.g. B for ball).

Alphabet Bingo

Each child looks for the letter the teacher calls out on their bingo card. If they have it, they cover it. Play until a card is full.

Alphabet Soup

Children take turns scooping up a letter from a bowl with a spoon or soup ladle. The child identifies the letter, and walks around the room searching for the letter somewhere in the classroom.
*To teach letter sounds: Children search for an object in the room that begins with that letter.

Letter Clips

Children squeeze the clothespins and clip them to the sides of the box. I wrote letters on dot stickers and placed the dot stickers around the sides of the boxes. I wrote letters on the clothespins so the children would match the letters on the clothespins to the letters on the boxes. This is similar to activities where children clip clothespins to a paper plate or cardstock circle; however, in my experience, those were flimsy and awkward to use, which is why I like the box better. Any sturdy box could be used (shoe box, postal box). The boxes in this picture were stacking gift boxes that held chocolate covered nuts (a Christmas gift), and they worked out perfectly. (By the way, Sam’s Club has these chocolate covered nuts in the same stacking boxes every year, and they are awesome!)

Memory Game

Place about three letter manipulatives on a tray, cover them with a cloth, and take one away. When the letters are uncovered, children guess which letter is missing. Children find the letter that is missing among their own set of letter manipulatives. If the children are very interested in writing, they can write the letter that is missing on a dry erase lap board. To increase the difficulty of this game, try using 4 or 5 letters. Another options is to place three letters on the tray, cover them, and ask the children to recall all three letters that were on the tray.

Alphabet Path Games

I made these path games using stickers bought in a craft store (scrapbooking section), and I made individual mats with about 10 letters on them. Each child gets a mat, a game piece, and some plastic chips to cover the letters on their mat. They roll the dice and count out the spaces to move their game piece. If their game piece lands on a letter that is on the mat, they cover that letter with a chip. Play continues until they have covered every letter.
Other ways we use the path games:

• Children identify the letter they land on, then find that letter somewhere in the classroom.
• Children find an object in the classroom that begins with that letter’s sound.

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