Engaging Activities for Teaching the Alphabet

Learning letters and sounds should be hands-on and fun!  One of the best ways to get students to master letters and sounds is to keep them engaged and motivated to practice.  In this post, I’m sharing my favorite engaging activities for teaching the alphabet. 

10 Fun Activities for Teaching the Alphabet

In order to master letter names and sounds, students need a lot of opportunities to practice. These hands-on alphabet activities will help you give your students plenty of repetition with each letter while keeping their interest.

1. Letter Building Mats

Give students opportunities to “build” letters with a variety of materials like play dough, connecting cubes, building blocks, craft sticks, etc. The hands-on practice is fun and easy to prep with materials you likely already have in your classroom! 

When you use letter-building mats with both uppercase and lowercase letters, students will have a visual cue of how to form each letter.  This makes it easy for students to practice letter formation independently during centers or morning work.

2. Race Car Letters

Do you have students who love toy cars?  This is the alphabet practice activity for them (and it's free!).  Your students can use toy cars to “drive” over each letter road. As they trace each letter with the car, they are getting a refresher on correct letter formation. 

The dotted lines for each road also provide the perfect lines for tracing practice with a dry erase marker. The star on each card reminds them where to start. These task cards are perfect for literacy centers, morning work, or even for small group practice!

3. Dot Letters

Kindergarteners absolutely love the novelty of dot markers! Use this to your advantage by incorporating dot letter cards into alphabet practice in your classroom. The best part is that these cards can also become reusable task cards.  Just laminate them and have students use small manipulatives to fill in the dots on each card. Add tweezers for additional fine motor practice!

If you’d like students to practice recognizing both uppercase and lowercase letters, you could also use these task cards for a matching activity.  Students can match the uppercase and lowercase version of each letter before filling in the dots.

4. Alphabet Book

Help your students practice identifying beginning sounds in words as they complete their own alphabet book. Students can trace or draw their own pictures to represent words that begin with each letter of the alphabet. For young students, there’s always something so exciting about flipping through a book they’ve created themselves!  

5. Trace and Write Practice

Another way to keep students engaged in repetition is to use the same activity in different ways. These letter tracing activities can be printed as worksheets or cut apart to create laminated task cards. As students practice letter formation with different writing utensils, they will also be strengthening their fine motor skills. These cards are free inside our Kindergarten Teacher Hangout Facebook group. Click here to join us!

6. Letter Anchor Charts

The way you introduce letters in kindergarten can go a long way in student engagement!  As I’ve shared in a previous blog post, I like to introduce letters one at a time during the first month of school. You can use alphabet anchor charts to show students how to form the uppercase and lowercase letter.  An anchor chart is also a great place to keep examples of words that use that letter.

You can also use a corresponding practice sheet that has the same format as the anchor chart.  Students can fill this in as you complete the anchor chart, or as a separate activity after completing the anchor chart as a whole group activity.

7. Letter Mini Books

As you focus on one letter at a time, students can complete their own mini books for each letter!  Each page has a different task for students to complete like finding the letter, rainbow writing, and finding pictures that begin with that letter sound. 

The book has the same format for each letter, so these mini-books can quickly become a routine that students can complete with independence.  

8. Alphabet Practice Sheets

These alphabet practice sheets are a great way to help students summarize everything they’ve learned about each letter.  They are able to rainbow write, trace, and write the uppercase and lowercase letter.

Students can also draw a picture with that beginning sound and complete a sentence frame to go with it.

9. Letter Hats

An important part of learning something new is being able to talk about what you’ve learned.  Alphabet hats provide a chance for students to talk about letters! 

As they wear these hats around the school and then take them home, your students will definitely be asked about what they’re wearing.  This gives them another chance to talk about letters!

10. Letter Sound Poems

An important part of teaching the alphabet is to help students match print to sound.  A fun way to help students retain letter sounds is to use simple rhymes!  Whether you choose to sing or recite letter sound poems with your students, the rhythm and pattern will help students retain what they’re learning about the alphabet. They take very little time to incorporate into your daily routine, but they can have a huge impact on learning!

Poems are also fun to send home for extra practice.  You can send home one poem at a time as focus on each letter, or you can create a book with all of the letter poems for each student to take home.

Printable Alphabet Activities for Kindergarten

Are you looking for some engaging activities to add to the alphabet instruction in your classroom? Check out this easy-to-download resource that’s full of engaging alphabet activities! To take a closer look at everything included in this bundle of letter practice activities, head over to the Teaching Exceptional Kinders shop or to my TPT store.

Save These Activities for Teaching the Alphabet

If you’d like to find these activities later, be sure to save this post!  Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest.  You’ll be able to quickly find these activities for teaching the alphabet whenever you need them!