Ten Things Your Child Can Do At Home with Magnetic Letters

So, my four year old is all signed up for kindergarten!  The boy can write his name and knows how to spell his last name.    He loves books and can read lots of sight words.  He doesn’t show as much interest in writing as his sister did at this age, but I’m not comparing.  Moms aren’t supposed to do that.  Especially mom teachers ~ especially mom reading specialist teachers!

So as we get the boy ready for kindergarten, I thought I’d share ten activities that you could do at home with magnetic letters!   Every kid deserves the chance to play with magnetic letters before they hit kindergarten.

• Sing the alphabet song and put the letters in ABC order.
• Make names of family members and friends.
• Sort the letters according to the sizes tall, fall and small.  For example, the hang down letters are all FALL letters because they fall below the baseline when you write them:  lowercase g, j, p, q, and y are fall letters.  The TALL letters touch the top line when you write them.  All uppercase letters and b, d, f, h, k, l,  and t are tall.  The rest of the alphabet is small because those letters only reach the midline when you write them.
• Sort the vowels (or star letters). You can’t make a word without a star letter, so the vowels are superstars in words!
• Demystify “elemeno”.  That’s that crazy long letter that comes before P in the alphabet song.  Point to each letter with your child as you sing to show that L, M, N and O are all stand alone letters!
• Make words.
• Make words that follow the consonant, vowel, consonant pattern. For example:  C A T  After you make one CVC word, have your child take the first letter away and replace it with a new letter – now you’re rhyming!  Change CAT to HAT, BAT, FAT, SAT, etc!
• Practice letter sounds.
• Practice blending sounds (bl) (sl) (fl) (gr) (tr)
• Put them on your washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, or even paint a wall in your home with magnetic paint!  Use old cookie sheets to play with magnetic letters too!

Looking for other useful ideas for helping your child learn to read? Check out my other posts on literacy! Thanks for stopping by!