Object Hunt and Letter Sound Match - Sensory Play

The little one's fondness for letter sounds is still very fresh and so am trying to make the most of it by thinking up new activities and games related to phonics. Our first two letter sound activities were much loved by the Mini. Listing them here, in case you have missed them. 

• Letter Sounds and Object Match
• Letter Sound (of colours) Car Park 

For this letter sound activity, I brought in some sensory play as well. I collected random items from around the house (Onion for O, Fork for F, Garbage Truck for G, Road Roller for R... etc). I used our rice bin as a base, in which I hid in these random objects. The little guy had to search through the rice bin and find these items one by and one and then match them with the letters written on sheets of paper, based on the starting letter of the items.

He was able to figure out the the starting letter of most items, while need a little bit of help with some. This is a very easy to set up game for toddler just starting out with letter sounds. They not only get familiar with everyday object and their names but also learn letter sounds and eventually to spell the names of these objects.

How I Set it Up:

• I first gathered random items from around the house that were not too big in size. I tried to make sure the items have different starting letters. In some cases, I picked multiple items with the same starting letters, just to get him thinking.
• I then wrote the starting letters of all these items on two sheets of paper (making sure all the items were included.)
• Like in all our sensory play set ups, I first laid out our plastic sheet on the floor. Then I kept a big tray with rice in it. I dunked all the items that I collected into the rice bin and hid them the best I could.

• I taped the sheets of paper on either sides of the tray and invited him to come and play!

• He had to fish out the items one by one from the rice bin, identify the item, figure out the starting letter of the item, find the corresponding letter written on the sheet of paper and then place the item over the letter on the sheet of paper.

• He had to repeat this till all the items were taken out of the rice bin.