Sunday, February 22, 2009

Game Time

Children often learn the alphabet song pretty easily without clearly realizing the letters are all actually being said by name. Elemenopee? Here's a simple game that can help solidify letter identification for children and teach alphabetic order as well. This is best played with one adult or older child and two younger children. All the materials you need are a set of alphabet cards that includes lower and uppercase letters. Deal out a manageable number of cards to each player, keeping them face down in a stack. With my two four year olds, that's five cards.

Each player turns up the top card of their stack. The person with the card that comes first in the alphabet gets to take all the cards. At first, kids will have trouble identifying which letter comes first unless there's a A or B in the group. So, start singing the alphabet song with them, and point to the letter that "wins" when you get to it.

Of course, there are many variations possible with this game. Change the winning letter to the last one. Make it trickier. If the person with the card doesn't hold up her hand when it is sung, she doesn't win.

The whole goal is just to have fun, practice letter identification, turn taking and sportsmanship. Enjoy!

1 comment:

  1. Hello Sarah. Thanks for your comments on my novel's first chapter. It is progressing nicely and should be ready withing a month or so. Send me your email if you wish and I will add you to my columns list. I write for the Suburban Journals of St.Louis, a biweekly column since 2004. send it to
    Take care.