Learning Letters, 10 Practical Ways to Do it Right

Learning Letters in Preschool

Learning letters is a cornerstone of my PreK literacy curriculum.  In PreK, our goal is to get our kids ready for kindergarten in every way possible.  Consequently, finding ways to learn letters is always top on my list.  In all honesty, I would love it if all my students knew all the uppercase, lowercase, and 5-10 letter sounds by the end of the year.  But, how do we get there? To tell the truth, it is easier than you think.  I’ll walk you through 10 ways that I bring learning letters into my classroom each day. Here we go!

Learning to Recognize Letters

The first place to start is really simple. They need to know how to recognize the uppercase letters and the lowercase letters.  How are they different? How are they alike?  

For instance, I like to begin with a simple upper and lowercase letter sort.  Initially, we will take a good look at a few letters.  We will look at the uppercase “M” and talk about the straight lines, how it is tall and strong.  Similarly, we look at the lowercase “m”.  Next, I ask the kids to tell me what is different.  It is shorter, it is soft and curvy, etc.  After that, we will just sort letters by uppercase and lowercase.  You could simply use flashcards and sort the letters into piles.  

For the purpose of variety, I have created a few sets of letter sorting games. To start with, I use plain shopping bags and theme pictures with an arrow facing up for uppercase and an arrow facing down for lowercase.  Next, I like to place a bag at either end of my rug to bring some movement into our activity as the kids take their letters and walk to drop them into the correct bag.  The kids absolutely love this game!  Because of this, you will find that this is a great activity to repeat several times a year for your preschool 3-4’s.

Learning Letters of Your Name

Learning the letters of our names begins during the first week of both Preschool and Prek!  So, we make first letter necklaces, color or paint our first letter, and look for our first letter at our coat hook, our cubbies and our center sign in.  In addition to htose activities, I will also add every child’s name to their letter on my alphabet line.  

Throughout the year, find ways to add name activities to your lesson plans.  Additionally, make sure you keep leveling up your name activities as you go.  To start with, you can write their letters for them.  Subsequently, you could add tracing or asking the kids to write the first letter only.  You will find that for PreK, you can quickly move into writing each letter independently.  For this reason, I always have name strips the kids can grab and copy their letters handy.  Helpful hint…put each child’s picture on their name strip to make it easy for them to find their name and make the association with their letters.

Learning Letters Toys

There are a lot of toys for learning letters.  A visit to your local Target or Lakeshore Learning store will have a lot to choose from. Consequently, I’ve tried a lot of them over the years, but I’m only going to mention one here.  In my opinion, the best toy to promote learning letters i simple alphabet magnets.  

One of the favorite activities in my classroom is just playing with magnetic letters on cookie sheets.  I set out a big container of alphabet letters and a Dollar Tree cookie sheet at each place and I just let the kids play.  They love to put as many letters as they can on the cookie sheet and then ask me what it says.  So, I will sound out their ‘word’ and the giggles erupt into laughter.  This goes on for a while, but then the kids will begin to find the letters in their names and spell simple CVC words like ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’.  Whatever happens, it is really fun to watch it all evolve.

Learning Letters with Anchor Charts

As part of my Letter of the Week Curriculum, I made anchor charts for both upper and lowercase letters. As I introduce each letter, I will show first the uppercase letter.  We use skywriting to write the letter in the air, and then we talk about and make the letter sound.  My anchor charts are full of beginning sounds pictures for each letter.  In whole group, I will point to each picture in the letter and we will say the word together.  We will do the same with the lowercase letter, but I add asking what is the same and what is different between the two.  

I have a matching set of letter sound cards to go with each anchor chart set. I bring those out after the initial introduction.  The pictures are the same as those shown on the anchor charts with a few more added. At first, I wasn’t sure if this activity was necessary…but if I didn’t do it, one of my PreK kids would bring the cards to me and say, “When are we doing these?” Now I never forget!

Letter Tracing Worksheets

Normally I don’t like worksheets to be used in Preschool or Prek, but I find that letter tracing is really important while learning letters.  While tracing, we use our fine motor skills and practice correct formation.  With this in mind, with my preschool 3-4’s I begin the year with large tracing letters.  One large uppercase letter on one side, and one large lowercase letter on the other side. As the year goes on, I give my 3-4’s a choice of the big letter or the smaller letters, then the last 6 weeks, I only bring out the smaller letters. For my PreK kids, I begin and end with the smaller letters.  As a result, by the end of the year, most of my kids can independently write about 10 letters.

Letter Hunts

One of our favorite learning letters activities is the letter hunt.  There are many ways to do a letter hunt. To begin with,  I like to use a letter hunt or seek and find printables.  In addition, we will do ‘Cover the Letter’ mats, ‘Scrambled Letters’ seek and find, and ‘Mark the Letter’ printables with bingo daubers. 

At the halfway point in the year I will add letter hunts in the room and throughout our school.  A while back I found some fun clear glasses a while back at the Target Dollar Spot, and some finger-pointers from Lakeshore Learning.  First, the kids pick a pointer and pair of glasses then we look for our Letter of the Week.  I wish you could see how excited they get when they discover that our letters are all around us! The best part about this activity is it continues long after center time is over.  The kids will point out our letter every place they see it, and their parents tell me they continue at home as well! It makes me so happy!

Letter Hats

I have to give credit to Mr. Greg over at kindergartenmorgasboard.com for this one.  If you aren’t a subscriber to his site…you’re missing out! I watched a short video about his ABC Bootcamp to see if I wanted to implement it in my PreK classroom.  It is a fantastic program but definitely geared to kindergarten.  My favorite takeaway was Letter Hats.  I simplified the idea for my Preschool and PreK classes, and it was a HIT!  

For this activity, I make 2 different beginning sounds pictures with a letter in the center. One is funny and silly and the other is a bit more sensible.  For example, for the letter “U”, I chose underpants and unicorn.  The kids chose which hat they wanted to color.  Of course, wearing underpants on your head is very silly…most kids chose underpants!  I don’t do this activity for every letter, but when I do…I make it memorable!

Letter Crafts and Songs

We all learn in different ways, and while learning letters I try to cover all the bases!  My 2 favorite places for letter songs are found on youtube.  I go to youtube for the abcmouse letter songs and the storybots letters songs.  Both are extremely catchy and fun for the kids. I find myself singing the songs for the week’s letter all day long!  The kids love them and can’t wait for the new songs each week.  I also make sure I do some kind of craft relating to out letter or letter sound.  Some are very simple, and some can become a bit more elaborate!  I like to display the letter crafts in our classroom during the week to reinforce our letter and keep it visible!

Bringing Letters into Snack Time

Each year I make a placemat for each of my kids for snack time.  The placemat has 3 purposes. For example, it is a place for their snack, it has their name in the center for an extra name recognition activity, and the placemat has all the letters of the alphabet with a beginning sound picture.  Each week at snack time I ask the kids if they can find our letter of the week.  They get so excited when they find it and they can’t wait to show me!  This is yet another example of how learning letters can be worked into nearly every part of your classroom and your day.

Learning Letters Activities

I have mentioned a lot of activities to help preschoolers learn letters, but there are even more ways to engage your students while learning letters.  There are a lot of printable centers out there to help your class learn letters.  Some of my favorite are listed below.

• Upper and lowercase letter clip
• Dot the letter
• Letter matching games
• Play-doh mats
• Letter crowns
• Fill the letter
• Upper to lowercase puzzles
• Color the letter
• Letter Bracelets
• Necklaces
• Hand stamps
• Wands  

Learning Letters and Sounds

Learning letters would not be complete without learning the letter sounds as well.  Phonics is the foundation for reading.  Our job as Preschool and PreK teachers is to build a strong foundation in learning letters and basic phonics.  For some kids learning letter-sounds can be a very abstract concept. Learning letter sounds may not be developmentally appropriate for most of our preschool 3-4 kids, I believe exposure will lead to learning.  I will always teach the letter sound with each letter.  There are a lot of letter-sound activities you can add to your classroom this year.  Some have been mentioned above, a few more of my favorites are listed below.

• Clip the letter sound
• Mini-puzzles
• Letter and sound puzzles
• Matching games
• Letter-sound tubs
• etter-sound mini-show and tell

Putting it all Together

I hope this gives you a few ideas of how to incorporate learning letters into your curriculum.  Click here for more ideas and a checklist to make sure your class is kindergarten ready by the end of the year!

For fantastic ideas and more get Learning Letters; the Ultimate Checklist for Kindergarten Readiness for FREE!

Most of the resources pictured are available in my Ultimate Letter of the Week Bundle in my TPT store. Check it out!