Alphabet, numbers and colors game – with free printable

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Ness

We’ve been having fun playing all sorts of letter, number, and color matching games this week. I printed out the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 1 through 10 and a few different colored squares and we played some treasure hunt and matching games. They’ve kept R happily occupied for days so I thought I’d create a downloadable version of our game to share with you. Simply click on the photo below and you’ll be taken to a pdf file which you can then download. Below I’ve listed the different games we’ve been playing. Have fun! I’d love to hear about what games you come up with in the comments below. Let’s share some fun ideas.

If for some reason the photo does not link to the downloadable pdf, then simple click here for the free printable alphabet, numbers and colors game.

HOW TO PLAY
I began by cutting the letters, numbers and colors into individual squares. I then divided the squares into three separate bowls – one bowl contained the letters, a second contained the numbers and a third contained the colors.

We began with a simple alphabet hunt. R pulled one letter out of the bowl and would have to find an item that began with that letter. I think my favorite is the astronaut lego man that he found for “A”.

Next we tried a combined letters and numbers game by selecting one number square and one letter square. So in the photo above, R needed to find two items that began with an E, one item that began with a Z, and three items that began with a B.

We tried different combinations of printed squares for our treasure hunts. This time we looked for a pink item that began with a B and blue item that began with a T. This was probably the most challenging of all the variations that we played. It was easy to find an item that began with the correct letter, but not so easy to find one in the correct color!

For this game, we searched for two blue items.

Here we selected a printed square from each of the three bowls. In this example, we had to find one item that was blue and began with a T.

These games have been lots of fun since we can mix and match what needs to be found. I’d love to hear about the games that you create with them.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page or follow us on Pinterest. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

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Learning to Read – A Simple Word Family Game

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Ness

Here’s a simple word family game I set up for R (4). Learning word families is an important step for children learning to read as it helps them to recognise patterns within words. When they see a word that they’re not familiar with, they can deconstruct it by first seeing the word family and then adding the sound of the remaining letter/s. R has also been really interested in rhyming words for a while now so he loves word family games.

For this quick and easy word family game you will need:

A set of letters. You can use foam letters like we did, or a set of magnetic letters, or even alphabet play dough cutters.
A small bag

That’s it! Just two items.

How to play:

I set out three word families “at”, “ad” and “un”. I tried to make each pair of letters the same colour to help with the recognition of each word family, but it just wasn’t possible with our set of letters. If you can manage to make each pair the same colour with the alphabet set that you are using, then all the better.

I added some letters to our “mystery bag”. Some of the letters could be matched with all three word families (such as S – sat, sad, sun). To make it a little more challenging I also included letters that could only be matched with one or two of the word families (for example the letter M) Before selecting any letters from the bag, we practised reading just the word families on their own. R has been learning letter recognition phonetically using Montessori style activities, so rather than me just telling him how each word family sounds, I showed him how to take the individual letter sounds and then combine them so that he could work it out for himself. After working on “at” together, he was able to read “ad’ and “un” on his own.

R then began selecting letters from our mystery bag and matching them to the word family pairs.

I really like working with these foam letters rather than just cards with the letters printed on them. These foam letters are our thrifty version of a Montessori moveable alphabet. They are so tactile – R can feel the shape of each letter as he handles them. Montessori teaching is very sensorial, even when it comes to literacy and Math, and R is a very sensorial learner so these letters are perfect for his learning style. One day I’ll make an accurate Montessori moveable alphabet in the correct colours but until then, this suits us very well.

R had great fun combing the letter sounds to decipher the words and swapping letters around to find rhyming words. This took just minutes to prepare and was such a fun and simple way for R to begin learning some basic reading skills.

I’d like to make a word family game like the one shared over at The Snail’s Trail. I love anything made from paint chips! The same post also has a HUGE list of phonograms (word families) and word combinations. It’s a seriously brilliant post. Check it out.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

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Water Painting on a Chalkboard – a Pre-Writing Activity

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Ness

Here’s a fun pre-writing exercise that I set up for R (3). It was quick and simple to put together and R absolutely loved it. I was inspired by this post at Teach Preschool. It looked like fun and I decided to add some number and letter recognition to the activity since R is all about letters and numbers at the moment!

YOU WILL NEED:

A chalkboard – this is actually optional. If you don’t have an easel or chalkbard, you could simply draw with the chalk on a path or your drive-way.
Chalk
A paintbrush
A container of water

I began by using the chalk to write some letters and numbers on the board. I showed R how to dip the paintbrush into the water and then paint over the letters and numbers with the water. Here he is painting over the “R” that I wrote.

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