Playful

Friday, April 27, 2012

Alphabet Buttons Equals Hours of Fun Learning

     Over the weekend I was at Wal Mart and I saw a bag of alphabet buttons for $5.  I was excited because I knew there were a ton of fun activities we could do with them with little to no prep or other materials.  That's my kind of activity! 
Activity 1:  I poured the buttons in a muffin tin and let the children explore with them for a few minutes.  They grabbed them with their hands and moved them from place to place. 



Next, each child was given a letter card and they had to find their matching letter button.



Activity 2: Sort the buttons by color.





Activity 3:
     Toddlers love pouring items from container to container. 


Activity 4
     Spelling.  If the child is a beginner... put the letters that they will need with a couple extra in one container or laid out in front of them  so the child does not become overwhelmed.  C wanted to spell cat so she found a C and A and T.  Then she wanted to spell mat so she removed a letter and added  m.


     Do you see the B, S, and H?  I pulled these letters out of the muffin tin after she made Mat to help guide her to make more AT words besides cat and mat.  This is the first time that she was spelling so I didn't want her to be overwhelmed by digging in the tin for the letters.



Activity 5: Letter Hunt
     I called out a letter and C would pull it out of the tin!  She was so proud!  For a modification, you could have them focus on one muffin slot or to make it more challenging you could have them look at the entire tin. 


Activity 6:  Color Hunt
     I called out the color orange and the children searched in the tin for an orange letter and pulled it out and showed me.
     
Activity 7: Putting the buttons in ABC order. 

     Things to keep in mind when using the buttons are the letters are all uppercase and they are small. We had so much fun exploring with them and they beg me to play with them everyday!


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7 comments:

  1. So many great ideas! I love when we can use one tool for several activities. Stopping by from Show and Share Saturday. :)

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  2. I love this idea! Nothing like a new bag of colorful, little letters for little hands. I loved reading all the learning coming out of this 1 bag, especially the word families. Good shopping snag and amazing application!

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  3. I picked up those same buttons at Joanns a couple months back and was also pretty excited. We've had a lot fun them, excited to see a couple more ideas, thanks for sharing.

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  4. Wow, I'd say that was five bucks well spent! I've only just introduced foam letters.

    I'd love it if you'd link up at my Teaching Time for Toddlers Tuesday party.

    http://philwife.blogspot.com/2012/04/teaching-time-for-toddlers-tuesday.html

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  5. What a lot of great ideas for what you can do with the letters. I do like them - have them all over my freezer.

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  6. Wow, you really got a lot of activities from those buttons! I will have to look for them. Vicky from www.messforless.net

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  7. What a great set of ABC activities. I have a huge tub of magnetic letters that I think I will get out to do some of them with.

    Thank you for linking to Tuesday Tots this week

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