Dump the ABC!

If you know my Mini a little, you will definitely know about his obsession for ABCs! He is truly madly deeply in love with the letters of the Alphabet that anything to do with letters, he is happy! Reading the wordings on our Tees, subtitles on TV, pages of books... well anything at all! :)

To encourage this interest of his, I set up lots of activities around letters for him. We have done letter recognition activities, letter cases matching activities and more recently have begun doing letter sound activities as well. 

This post is about a super fun little game that I made up for him, of course to do with letter and his favourite vehicle - the dump truck! The idea just popped up in my head and I couldn't wait to try it out. 

It is based around upper and lower case letters identification and matching. Mini knows his upper and lower case letters so this activity helped to reinforce that knowledge in a super fun way. 

He had to 'drive' his little dump truck, loaded with a capital letter at a time, through a maze that has lower case on either sides in random order. He had to find the matching lower case letter for the upper case letter that he is carrying in his dump truck and 'dump' the upper case letter at the correct dump spot! :D 

It was a super hit. Please go and try it if your tiny is a vehicle lover like mine! :)

Popsicle Sticks - Upper and Lower Case Letters Match

The first activity that we did around upper and lower case identification was the one with building blocks. It was a fun little DIY that the Mini loved and I give that activity credit for actually helping him identify most of the lower case letters. 

So, ever since then I wanted to do a few more activities around the different cases and finally got around setting this one up. It is a simple DIY and can be easily made with items available around the house. I love cardboard box DIYs and this is one of the easiest of them all!

You can use simple plain coloured popsicle sticks for this, but I had fancy coloured ones and I loved the pop of colour they brought in to the set up as a good contrast to the brown of the cardboard box. So, its not a must that you use coloured popsicle sticks here, but if you like pretty things like me... try to get them! :D They should be available in most stationery supply stores.

This activity not only helps in upper and lower case letter identification and association, it also helps work on the fine motor skills of those little hands pushing the popsicle sticks through the slots on the cardboard. Mini had a lot of fun doing this over and over and after almost 6 months, he still enjoys playing with this DIY :)

Building Blocks - Upper and Lower Case Letters Match

This particular game is dear to me as it was through this super simple and fun game that my little boy got a hold of lower cases letters. While setting this up for him, I had not expected him to pick up the concept of upper and lower cases really, I knew he will like it as he was and still is super fond of blocks and this case matching game is all about playing with building blocks! :)

My little fellow's obsession for the English alphabet began at 25 months and since then we have played quite a few fun games around identifying the letters. So in about two months, he was able to identify all the letters, in upper case... because that's the only form I had introduced to him so far. I was never looking to train him in knowing the letters by a certain age, I was only keen on feeding his curiosity around letters and helped him identify them as and when he pointed and asked what each letter was. Around 27 months, I began basing our fun games around lower cases to help him understand the different letter cases.

So, I really didn't go by any rule of introducing letter sounds first, and if letters, then only lower case letters. I did have an apprehension if it will cause a problem for him later on once he joins school where they focus on letter sounds and not letter identification. But I really went by what I felt was best for him and what I felt interested him. I am really glad I did that because, today at 3 years, he is doing just fine with letter sounds and the fact that he knows to identify letters in both cases does not hamper his phonics learning journey at all.

So, getting back to this little game. All that we used here are a few building blocks and a marker. I am always looking for new ways to repurpose his existing toys, so used some old building blocks for this little matching activity. The Mini loved it, like I knew he would but he surprised me by matching the upper and lower case letters in just one go! :)