9 Fun Letter Recognition Activities With This Free Printable

Letter recognition, or the ability to identify letters is an important component of early literacy. Let’s look into what letter recognition is all about, and then I will share some fun letter recognition activities. Don’t forget to download the free printable letter signs to use for all the fun activities.

What is Letter Recognition?

When kids learn to identify letters, they learn to

• notice that letters of the alphabet all have different shapes
• match letters that are alike
• understand that some letters are in their names
• notice that letters are in environmental print
• understand that letters have an orientation
• notice that some letters have similar parts (tails, hooks, dots, slants, tunnels, curves, etc.)

When they can begin to distinguish individual letters, they can begin to produce some of the letter names or their corresponding sounds.

How to Teach Letter Recognition

Kids learn letters and their sounds through varied and repeated exposure, and there are many playful ways to teach the alphabet.

Do Letters Need to be Taught in a Specific Order?

No, you do not need to teach letter recognition skills in a specific order. Don’t worry about following alphabetical order. In fact, one of the best ways to begin with letter recognition activities is to start with the most important letter to young child – the first letter of a child’s name.

As children begin to recognize the letters in their names with a variety of name activities, you can begin to look at additional letters that are important to them. A fun way is to look at letters in environmental print and some of the most common letters used in our language (for example, t is more common than x)

Capital Letters versus Lowercase Letters

Some early childhood educators teach uppercase letters first because uppercase letters are easier for young kids to write. I think that it is best to teach uppercase and lowercase letters at the same time.

When you look at print in books, newspapers, etc., the majority of the text is made with lowercase letters. Don’t confuse young children. I feel it’s best to teach them the correct usage of cases from the start.

Letter and Letter Sounds

Knowing the sound that a letter makes is really more important than knowing its name, so it is important to introduce the letter and the corresponding letter sound from the beginning.

When my son was little, his private occupational therapist was upset because he identified some letters by their sound rather than their name. She was insistent that he HAD to know the names of the letters and didn’t understand why I was excited that he knew the sounds. It was time for a change, so this just encouraged me to find another occupational therapist for him.

Playful Letter Recognition Activities with Free Printable

Are you looking for some fun letter activities for teaching letter recognition? I created these free printable signs and want to show you a bunch of hands-on activities to use them.

The signs are designed so that they have an uppercase printed on the front and a lowercase printed on the back. You can create signposts with a cut pool noodle and popsicle sticks (instructions included with printable), or you can use them without signposts.

From letter recognition games to fun hands-on activities, here are some different ways to use the signs in your literacy centers.

Find Letters in Your Name

You can make a playful game with the alphabet signs. Put some different letters on the floor with some toy cars. Kids can drive their car in a circle around the letters that are part of their names. For more multi-sensory input, encourage them to say the sound of the letter as they drive around it.

Extensions: Kids can drive around the letter of the week. a letter from a friend’s name or letters on a word card.

Sort Letters with similar parts

Young learners can find letters of the alphabet with similar attributes and can sort them. For example, they can find all the letters with dots, straight lines, slanted lines, circles, tunnels, hooks, tails, etc. This will help them with the visual discrimination skills needed to distinguish one letter from the next.

Uppercase and Lowercase Match

Here is a fun letter hunt or matching letter activity. Print two sets of signs and prepare sets of some letters. Kids can drive from an uppercase letter to a lowercase letter.

Extensions: Provide some painter’s tape, and they can create a path on the floor for their car to follow from one letter to the next.

Special Delivery

Prep some sign tents for your kids and provide some toy pickup trucks or dump trucks for an easy way to motivate kids to work on letters. Kids can place the tents in the back of their trucks and deliver the letters.

Kids can deliver uppercase letters to the lowercase letters of the alphabet (or visa versa). They can sort the letters by appearance (those with straight lines, curves, circles, tunnels, hooks, tails, dots, etc.)

Label Buildings

Use the abc signs in the building block area to help kids learn letter recognition. Use the letter signs to create street signs or to label buildings or structures.

Cars & Directions

Create roads with masking tape and add abc signs at the crossroads. Give directions (turn right at the m) to your kids or have them give directions to you. Make the sound of the letter as you pass it.

Extension: Create maps of your roads.

Knock Down Letters

Place some signs in a row. Roll a ball and knock some over. Kids can name letters as they fall and say the sounds of the letters they knock over.

Extensions: To help kids learn beginning sounds, challenge them to say the name of something that starts with a letter that was knocked over.

Create Words

When kids master letter recognition and learn their sounds, you can even use the alphabet cards or signs as an interactive way to create words.

Get Your Free Printable

Are you ready to start trying some of these fun and easy letter recognition activities for preschool today? The free printable signs are a great resource and are part of my multi-sensory alphabet activity guide. Fill out the form below, and I will be happy to send the free printable directly to your inbox.

Additional Alphabet Activities for Your Kids

Looking for additional activities to boost your kids’ literacy skills? Check out the blog posts below for fun activities for your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students or kids at home.