Letter Sound and Object Match

Identifying the starting letters of words is one of Mini's latest favourite games. We play this orally multiple times a day, I just ask him 'what is the first letter of...' and he tries to guess the letter of the word. Of course I need to stress on the starting letter of each word, as he is just getting started on letter sounds.

So a couple of days back, I set up a game around his new interest. I used random stuff from around the house for this game. I wanted him to get familiar with letter sounds with everyday items first, before we move on to more complex words. I am very new to phonics too, in fact I am learning it along with him. I have no idea on how to teach him letter blending and so on... in fact for now, I plan to go slow on it and let his teachers at school take the lead, while just build a strong basic foundation of simple letter sound!

So, all the random stuff that I gathered, I put in a big basket and placed it along side a sheet of paper. I wanted to be able to quickly change the letters, so used sticky notes to mark letters on the sheet of paper and made little lanes. He had to pick one item at a time from the basket and place it in the corresponding letter lane based on the first letter.

Just as I expected, the little fellow wanted a variation in letters after playing it two times and I was glad I had used sticky notes, so I could easily change the letters for a new round of the same game. He did well on most items and needed my guidance on a few. Overall, he enjoyed it and I am sure we will be playing this a lot in the coming days.

How We Played:

• I first thought of 4 letters and gathered random stuff from around the house than began with those four letters. I did not want to overwhelm him with too many letters at one go.
• I put these items in a big basket and kept it aside.

• I used a long strip of paper and taped it on the floor. Using a marker, I divided the sheet into 4 rows.
• Then, I wrote the four letters on sticky notes and pasted them on each row of the paper.
• Finally, I asked the little one to pick one item at a time and say aloud its name and figure out which of the four letters it belongs to. I helped him here, by stressing on the starting letters of the items he had picked. 

• Once he guessed right, he placed them in the appropriate row. 

• He did this thrice over and then wanted new letters! So we wet around gathering new items and played this a few more times with the new set of letters.