Helping your child learn their ABCs can seem daunting. Where do you begin? What should you do? My advice as a mother of four and former kindergarten teacher is to keep it FUN! Children learn through play, exploration, reading, and observation. Learning the alphabet doesn’t have to mean memorizing flash cards or endless workbook pages. I’ve compiled a list of 50 EASY and FUN alphabet activities, books, and toys for you to try with your child.
Have fun learning, playing with, observing, writing, reading about, touching, and exploring the alphabet with your child! Learning the ABCs is FUN!
Alphabet Books
1. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin
2. Alphabet City by Stephen Johnson
3. Dr. Seuss’s ABC by Dr. Seuss
4. Alphabet Adventure by Audrey Wood
5. LMNO Peas by Keith Baker
6. Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack: A Typing Adventure by Doreen Cronin
7. Shiver Me Letters: A Pirate ABC by June Sobel
8. The Z was Zapped: A Play in Twenty-Six Acts by Chris Van Allsburg
9. Alphabatics by Suse MacDonald
10. Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray
11. Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert
12. Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham
13. Curious George’s ABCs by H.A. Rey
14. Museum ABC by The NY Metropolitan Museum of Art
15. The Alphabet Book by P.D. Eastman
16. Eric Carle’s ABC
18. B is for Bulldozer: A Construction ABC by June Sobel
Touch and Feel the ABCs
1. Shaving cream alphabet – Your kids will love this one!
Squirt a small amount of shaving cream onto a table or a placemat. Have your child spread it around with their hands. Now you have a great (and fun!) writing surface. Let your child practice writing the letters in the cream with their fingers. The great part is that they can practice over and over!
2. Form the ABCs with playdough
3. Bend pipe cleaners to form the letters
4. Play with alphabet foam stickers – You can often find these at your local dollar store!
5. Paint the alphabet with pudding painting
This is another great sensory activity! Spread a small amount of pudding on the table or a placemat. Let your child smear it around, and then they can practice writing their letters in the pudding over and over!
6. Play with ABC blocks – Form words, line up the letters in abc order, group letters together, etc.
7. ABC Sensory Bin – “Hide” abc magnet letters in a small tub filled with sand, dry beans, rice, etc. Have your child go on an abc hunt and see if they can find all of the letters.
9. Use blocks to form the letters
10. Use your bodies to form the letters! Kids love getting creative with this one!
11. Line up ABC flash cards in alphabetical order
Write the ABCs
1. Use every color of the rainbow
2. Use alphabet stamps
3. Use a dry erase board – Kids love dry erase! I love that they don’t use 500 sheets of paper! Sometimes you can find dry erase boards with one side plain, and one side with writing lines.
Eat the Alphabet
1. Alphabet Pasta (My local grocery store carries this for $.34!) If you can’t find the plain noodles, look for alphabet soup!
2. Alpha-Bits cereal
3. Alphabet crackers (Look for Earth’s Best Organic Letter of the Day Cookies, CHEEZ-IT Scrabble,or Newman’s Own Organics Alphabet Cookies)
4. Create your own ABC snacks with a set of alphabet cookie cutters!
5. Use a piping bag or pancake art squeeze bottle to form alphabet pancakes!
Play with Alphabet Toys
1. Learn the ABC Verses (link includes free printable I created!)
2. Go on an ABC hunt! (Instructions and a free printable in the middle of the post the link will lead you to!)
3. ABC Magazine Collage – Have your child hunt through old magazines or newspapers to find the letters of the alphabet. They will enjoy seeing all of the different fonts. Have them search for upper AND lower case letters!
4. Watch LeapFrog Letter Factory – There are a lot of great Leap Frog movies on Netflix streaming! My kids have enjoyed these.
5. Make Alphabet Matching Puzzles (Instructions in the link)
This post is part of the Ready for Kindergarten series on Chasing Supermom. Click HERE to find all of the other great kindergarten related posts!
