Alphabet Exploration

After four days of minimum days, our kinder students will be going to school full time.  The afternoons will be hard for some but I hope to make school exciting enough that they will not even realize that they are at school.  This week, I will introduce Word Work.  I am going to keep the tasks simple; with the intent of having the students explore the alphabet.  Like you, I have students with all, some or no letter recognition.  

To differentiate, a variety of tools will be available for them to use. 
Play Doh Letters: On Monday, I plan to introduce magic play doh and teach my students how to roll snakes to form letters.  They will have letter stampers available as well.

ABC Fishing: Students will go fishing for magnetic letters using these fishing poles, I purchased from Lakeshore Learning.  These will serve double duty. I am using them for math, too.
Letter Beads: Students can practice their fine motor skills while finding the letters in their name.  Letter beads are a year long word study choice in my classroom.
Alphabet Matching: Alphabet puzzles, alphabet games and pocket chart letters will be used to help students identify, sequence or match the alphabet. 



Connect 4 ABC:

I created this game to help my student with letter recognition and fluency.  I plan to play this with my class using the document camera; me versus my students.  Eventually,  I will add it into our Word Work centers.  My proficient students will be able to play the game with my monitoring. 
Here is a freebie for you to try with your students.  The alphabet is in order so that students can sing the alphabet if needed to identify the letter.



What do your literacy centers look like?  Do you have any favorites?

Happy Teaching and Learning!

5 comments

  1. These are great ideas! ABC centers are so important at the beginning of kindergarten! I do a lot of the ABC matching games and playdoh letters too. I also use salt boxes and gel bags for the students to practice making letters. Thanks for the connect 4 game...too cute!

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  2. I am going to use the image of the game on my Promethean Board. I made translucent blue and red circles that will fit over the chosen letter. A child on the blue team can just drag the blue circle over the letter he wants to "block or build". Thank you so much for sharing.

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  3. Looks like your students will be having lots of fun with the alphabet! Isn't it such a challenge when some students know all of the letters and some know none! I have those very same alphabet beads and have never thought to have them make their name-I need to do that-we have only used them for making sight words later in the year. Good luck this week!
    Meredith
    Keen on Kindergarten

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  4. Thank you so much for the freebie! I can't wait to use it! Pinned it to all sorts of boards! =)
    Simply Kinder

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  5. This looks like a fun game. Thank you so much. I love your ideas!

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