3D Letter Shapes

Purpose:  This easy activity will give 3-4-year-old children a hands-on experience that will help them become familiar with the shapes of the letters of alphabet. The results will be more attractive and child-friendly than pre-printed alphabets.  Remember that children first recognize the letters as shapes rather than as symbols of sound; it takes time for them to be developmentally ready to think symbolically.  And the ability to discriminate between and recognize the letters is critical to their future reading success.

 

Materials/Advance Preparation:

 

Basic Directions: Each time you introduce a new letter of the alphabet, create a large decorated letter

  1. Cut a large letter out of poster board (I use different colors for each letter), and decorate it as a group. Glue on whatever is handy. I have used cut-up egg cartons, feathers, cut-up paper towel rolls, etc.
  2. Paint the cardboard rolls and egg cartons and glue on buttons, foam shapes and various shapes from construction paper.
  3. When each letter is completed, hang it where everyone can see it.  Young children pay the most attention to things that are displayed near their line of sight (not more than four or five feet from the floor).  The letter has 3 dimensional qualities that really give it an artistic look!

Extension activities

  1. When the children are ready to begin to associate letters with sounds, write each child's name on a sentence strip (add a photo to the strip) and hang each strip beneath the appropriate letter.  This will give the children a good reference point for the letters of the alphabet and help them begin to make the sound-symbol connection.
  2. Attach to or surround the large letter shapes with pictures of objects that include that letter.  Near the T, you could put a (labeled) picture of a tree, and a cat, e
  3. Each child could also make his or her own letter (beginning letter of first or last name) and decorate it with picture of objects that also begin with that letter.

 

 

 

Eric Gidseg
 

Activities Home | Language Strand | Skills | Theme | Type | All