Learning alphabet letter sounds is an important step in teaching children to read. As I was thinking about how to teach my preschooler the phonetic sounds of alphabet letters, I wanted to create a fun way to teach him this. When I was walking around JoAnn’s Fabric Store last weekend, I came up with an idea for an alphabet sound box. This is a tool to teach kids sound recognition by pictures or objects. I created this alphabet sound box using a clear craft box ($3 at JoAnn’s).
First, I made some letter cards from by putting lowercase letter stickers on small pieces of cardstock paper. I wanted a way to easily remove them from the craft box, since I won’t be teaching him all the sounds at the same time.
Then I used clip art and stickers and put them on small pieces of cardstock, too. I also looked around my house for small items that would fit in the box.
You can choose the order to introduce the letters to your child. I am using the book, How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin to guide how I introduce letters. The only difference is that Tim had set 6 and 7 into one set, but I felt like that was too many letters to learn so I split them into two groups. I like that there is one vowel (including y) in each set (except set 6) and it’s not an overwhelming amount to learn. You can also download Teaching Letters in Groups in a pdf version.
To organize my letters, I put each set in a ziploc bag. I included the stickers or small objects to represent the sounds. (If you notice green letter stickers in the bag, that’s because I updated this post to our current alphabet box and we now have black letters.)
Now is the fun part…watching my child have fun with learning! I presented the box to him. I used set #1 (t, m, c, a) and gave him the bag with stickers and objects. The 4 letters were already positioned in the clear box and we went over the sounds each letter makes. Then he told me what the objects were and he placed them below the corresponding letter.
I also like arranging the box this way for sorting more objects by beginning letter sound.
I created this cover for the lid. If you’d like to download one, you can do that HERE.
I love how hands-on this activity is. I also love that my child is not overwhelmed with learning 26 letter sounds at once. We’ll master set 1 and then move on to set 2. Let me know if try this activity out!
You can also find a great choice of miniatures at MIMIAbyMIA. There are various options at a great price. Not expensive at all! https://www.etsy.com/es/shop/MIMIAbyMIA
I LOVE this idea and this my little girl will love it when we start preschool this fall!
I, too, love the idea of using stickers. And no kidding, I just came across a divided box similar to this while cleaning out my schoolroom this week, and thought, “Wonder what I can do with this?” What a blessing to come across this post! Thank you SO much! –Amy
Love this! Adding this to my list for projects to make for pre-k this fall. Thanks!
So glad to hear that! I have found it to be very helpful for my 3 year old. Thanks for your comment!
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Great activity! Would you recommend teaching the letters in those groups or just the letter sounds? Just curious. I saw that Montesorri recommends teaching the sounds instead of the letter name and in groups. Is that right? I have been going over one letter at a time at a pretty relaxed pace with Abby and plan really start her pre-school next year.
Hi Anna! After doing some research, it seems that people have various opinions on how to teach the letters. I went with the Montessori approach, which teaches them in groups. These groups of letters are from Tim Seldin’s book that is a popular way to teach the letters. I think it makes sense to teach in these groups because it only has 1 vowel per group. They do recommend teaching the sounds first, but I teach sounds and letters. Abby is young, so I think it’s totally fine to do a relaxed pace with her. Hope that answer is helpful and not too confusing!
Just stopping by to let you know I’ve featured this On The Sunday Showcase:
http://www.herecomethegirlsblog.com/2013/04/20/learning-letter-sounds.html
What a great idea – I could use something like this for my little guy. Following from the HOP – hope you can follow back 😉 https://www.facebook.com/HappyAndBlessedHome
Monica
http://happyandblessedhome.com
PS I do a Friday Linky party if you want to link up!
http://happyandblessedhome.com/category/family-fun/
The letter cards are so cute! Great idea 🙂
Thank you, Jen! 🙂
Those letters turned out so cute! I love that you used stickers for this activity. I have seen these boxes with small objects for each letter and I just got overwhelmed. I don’t have a fortune to spend on tiny objects for sound boxes! I never thought to use stickers though. What a great idea! Thanks.
Thank you!! It was very easy to set it up. I know, I didn’t want to spend a fortune on little objects that would probably get lost. I think this is a lot easier and probably cheaper. Thanks for your comment!
I cannot download the pdf of teaching letters in groups and your ebook through the link provided on this page.
I’m so sorry! I updated the file, so you can download it now. Sorry about that!