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Reception Teacher - Alphabet Games and Activities

by Leanne
(Adelaide, South Australia)

I have set up alphabet boxes. I went to my Local Florist and bought the boxes they put flower arrangements in. Each letter has a box and in it goes anything I can find that relates to that letter for example for the letter s I have .....
a rubber snake
a plastic seal
a sun hat
spoon
string
stamps (rubber stamping kind and postage stamps)
Mr Men books - "Mr Strong", "Mr Silly",
Little Cocky books " Suzies Silly Day"

Each week I introduce the letter and using the boxes set a table display of the focus letter. We brain storm words beginning with our letter and find pictures. The children always find more things to bring from home and add too it.

I use Letterland and so also have a big Sammy Snake picture and a CD player with the hand writing song and sound song.

I also bought lots of tracing, colouring, alphabet books and cut them up added a tracing sheet of the letter to match ie a sea scene to colour then on the back a page of s s s s s to trace and then laminated them. Only pictures relating to the letter of the week go onto the table. When children finish their work they can go to the letter table and use textas to practice the letter of the week, while listening to the CD. They love this and never say "what can I do now"

We also choose a song that features that letter and every morning we sing the letterland sound and writing songs and our chosen song. (Our sss song was Subunanan Kusasa from ABC song book 2000 which is typed up and enlarged, we circle all the ssss this song is also on the letter table.)

On Fridays we have our 6/7 Buddies come over. I have 6 groups, 6 Buddy leaders and we rotate through the activities that are set up based on our letter of the week. I have set up categories and just change the activity to suit the sound ie for 's activities' we did
Fine Motor - went to the sand pit and wrote sss and drew s pictures
Gross Motor- skipping
Computer - Story Box story and activity "Sunflower that went flop"
Listening secret sound game (match the sound to its picture)
Writing - secret messages (using lemon juice)
Art - use string dipped in paint and laid on the paper.

For our library lesson we find books with the title starting with S to take back to our room for class sharing.

I also try to do a cooking activity and for sss we made soup and sandwiches.

Each week there is always great excitement trying to work out what the new letter will be!