Alphabet Flash Cards

Like many of you out there with preschoolers one of the first things that your kids learn is the alphabet. I am sure that many of you already know that just because they learn it, if they don’t use it they will forget it pretty quickly. We are finding that out with our daughter. She knew all her ABC’s but hasn’t used some of them since preschool has started and so she is a bit rusty on them.

I was super excited when I found these alphabet flash cards because they have not just the letters but also a word that starts with the letter and a picture as well as both the upper and lower case letters. This is great for preschoolers to start seeing and hopefully recognizing words and it could be great for English Language learners because if they need help figuring out what the word is the picture then becomes a clue. So many fun uses for these and they of course were a really big hit in my house.

I of course laminated my cards so they would stand up to my 2 little kids. Enjoy your Alphabet flash cards!

ABC Bingo

So as most of you parents of preschoolers have learned there are two things that preschoolers start off learning right away, numbers and letters. My daughter has mastered her letters pretty well and now we are starting to think about my son. While my daughter knows her letters she still does need to keep practicing them because she can lose them so fast. A found this cute game of ABC Bingo over at Sassy Sanctuary. This blog has some great freebies so if you have some time check it out.

After I printed the ABC Bingo cards I cut them out and glued them on cardstock. One of the things I did when I was a teacher was place things on cardstock and laminate everything because we all know how hard kids are on things. I wanted to try and get as much use out of my handmade games and manipulative as I could since they took some work. Doing these two things will help out a lot!

Now I am sure most of you out there are saying yeah right laminate, that machine has to be expensive. Wrong, I was walking through Costco and found this one by Purple Cows for $20 and it came with 100 laminating sheets. It is really simple to use and did a great job. I found the same one I got on Amazon so check it out if you are in the market to get one.

Back to ABC Bingo, we took turns calling letters which was great for my daughter to recall the letters out of order. Once someone got a Bingo they had to read the letters that made that Bingo back. Again recalling the letters as well as recognizing them printed as well. My son isn’t quite there yet but he had a fun time helping call the letters as well.

The other great thing about this game is that it not only has the uppercase letters but the lowercase ones as well. That was a big problem for my daughter in the beginning, she was confused that there was more than one way to represent the letter. Below are the links to the ABC Bingo cards. I hope your family has as much fun as ours did playing ABC Bingo.

ABC Bingo card 1

ABC Bingo card 2

ABC Bingo card 3

ABC Bingo card 4

ABC Bingo card 5

ABC Bingo card 6

ABC Bingo card 7

ABC Bingo card 8

ABC Bingo Letters

Alphabet Word Book

So know that my daughter has her alphabet down we have been working on being able to hear what letter a word begins with. This can be easier said than done. Even simple words have a lot of sounds to them and that makes it hard to hear what the sound the word starts with. Not only that be as we all know most letters make more than one sound which really makes things tricky.

A great resource for all things preschool is Fishing For Ideas For Preschoolers. That is where I found the printable Alphabet Word Book.

This book has every letter of the alphabet and 2 words per letter that start with that letter. You are supposed to cut out all the letters and then have your preschooler glue them onto the correct page.

I wanted something that we could reuse so that we could have lots of practice as well as learn some new words other than the sight words we have been practicing. So what I did was cut them all out and then laminate them with contact paper. I then placed Velcro onto the words as well as the letter page. This way they can be put onto the page and then taken off so that we can reuse this activity. To keep it all together I made a book out of it by punching a hole in the top and placing them all on a book ring.

So now we have a great way to learn some new words and try to figure out what letter they start with. A fun way to learn some beginning letter sounds.

Alphabet Word Book in Color

Alphabet Word Book in Black & White

Alphabet Cards

My daughter loves to play games. Memory, go fish, Hi Ho Cherry O, Candy land, you name it and she is game to play it. Since she has this love for games I found balloon alphabet cards you can print off to play many different cards games with. If you want them to last longer coat them in clear contact paper and you then have alphabet cards to use.

The cards have both the upper case and lower case letters which makes them great for playing memory or go fish. You can also use them as flash cards but it is way more fun to play a game. I cut mine out and then went down to my local Wal-Mart and bought clear contact paper to coat them in. The contact paper is found on the same isle as the shelf paper. Simple to make and is going to provide us with hours of educational fun.

If you want some other style of alphabet cards check out the flower cards or candy cards. You can also print them in black and white but I thought color would be more fun.

Black and white balloon cards

Black and white candy cards

Black and white flower cards

Color Balloon cards

Color Flower cards

Color Candy cards

Alphabet Game

My daughter went to preschool for the last few months and while there she learned her phonics through a program called Zoo Phonics. It was a great program that taught the letter, the sound, and an action. There are many programs out there that do the same thing. Such a cute and fun way to learn your letter sounds. Since she knew that I wanted to make sure we kept practicing it and that she was able to recall them out of order. I also noticed that she only learned her upper case letters and wanted to make sure that she understood that there were lower case letters as well.

With this in mind I grabbed some cheap paper plates and wrote both the lower case and upper case letter on each plate so that we had the whole alphabet.

I then took all the plates and spread them out all over the floor. I would then say a letter and she had to find the letter stand on the plate and do the action while making the sound. She had a lot of fun running around the room searching for the letter.

The best part was that my 1 1/2 year old son would run after her and stand on the same plate and try to copy his sister. A lot of fun and a really cheap and easy game to make. For the clean up I made her bring me each letter in order starting with the letter A. A game we will defiantly be playing again soon.