Alphabet Center Activities

During this first month of school, I have focused A LOT on the alphabet. There is just so much to know, so many fun things to do, and so much reward for students when they really get a good understanding of the letters.

Some of my favorite moments during the school year happen during letter work! There are so many times that I wish I had a camera to capture my students reactions to their success of identifying letters and the letter sounds. Seeing that light bulb go off is the best!

Before you know it, students are taking that knowledge of identifying letters/sounds and applying that into reading small words! Now when that light bulb goes off it makes my heart smile so big!! 

There are just so many confidence building and proud moments when it comes to learning the alphabet. I have a lot of different activities and resources that I like to use to help teach the alphabet in my classroom and I wanted to share them with you!

I have already shared with you my NO PREP Alphabet Printables in a previous blog post, that you can read all about HERE.

I wanted to share with you today my Alphabet Centers. These alphabet centers are not only a lot of fun for students, but they don't even realize they are learning! 

We were working on these alphabet centers this week and one of my students said, "I love this game!!! I want to take it home to keep playing!!!" He had absolutely no idea that he was even learning and practicing his letters! What he did know what that he was having fun!

When I heard those words, I knew my mission was achieved! Have fun while learning!! 

These activities are great to use during centers, small group, independently, and more! I use them a lot throughout the entire year in my centers and reading groups.

Each center includes:
• ‘I Can’ kid friendly posters for student independence. (Multiple posters to choose from to   

   differentiate each activity)
• Recording sheets for student accountability.
• Detailed how to use and prep directions.
• Easy to prep activities.

Students get to practice letter identification, beginning sounds, sorting, handwriting, fine motor skills, and so much MORE.

I have some students that come in to my classroom not knowing any letters, some students that know a handful of letters, and some students who know all the letters and even the sounds!  I do my best to meet all of those needs and have made these centers with lot of different options per activity to differentiate! 

This activity is so much fun! Students use unifix cubes to make an uppercase and lowercase letter.

Here is a great fine motor skills activity using play dough to form letters. Students also get to practice writing the letter with a dry erase marker. I like to put activities in sheet protectors when using dry erase markers. They are so easy to erase for students and the activity stays in great condition. 

I HIGHLY recommend trying it out!

Here is another activity that has so much differentiation included! 

Build a train by putting uppercase letters in order.

Build a train by putting lowercase letters in order.

Build a train by putting pictures in alphabetical order.

Match uppercase to lowercase letters in alphabetical order.

Match pictures to the correct beginning sound letter in alphabetical order.

As you know, I love mystery puzzles! I have used them for years and they have always been a class favorite! There are 9 different mystery puzzles included. You can match uppercase letters to lowercase letters, lowercase letters to uppercase letters, and pictures to the correct 

beginning sound letter.

Another fun activity is this beginning sound practice. Students use clothespins to find all of the pictures with the correct beginning sound. I like to use the small clothespins on this activity, but regular sized clothespins work great too!

This activity is great practice for matching uppercase and lowercase letters as well as finding the picture with the same beginning sound as the letter.

Alphabet dominos really gets that brain thinking! To help differentiate, I have dominos where you match uppercase to lowercase letters and dominos where you match letters to the picture with the same beginning sound as the letter.

To help practice knowing the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters, students place the letter on the fish in the correct fish bowl.

Another letter matching activity has students matching the lowercase letter on the baseball to the uppercase letter on the glove.

This letter identification activity has students looking for the correct uppercase and lowercase letters. I put the letters in different fonts to add more of a challenge!

One thing I have learned over the years is that students need a lot of reminders on how to do activities and that is absolutely okay! They already have so much that they have to remember in one day and can get a little overwhelmed! I know I can't remember everything!

I love to use 'I Can' kid friendly posters with all of my center activities to provide support, guidance, and extra reminders for my students. As I introduce the activities to my students I am always holding the 'I Can' poster and referring to it so that students know how to use the poster when they are working on the activity. 

Here are examples of some of the 'I Can' posters for each alphabet center activity. You will see multiple posters for the same activity and that is because there are different levels to allow you to differentiate.

I hope these ideas were helpful! If you would like to use these centers in your classroom, you can find them in my TpT Store! You can click on the picture below to check them out:

You can SAVE BIG with my Alphabet MEGA BUNDLE!! This MEGA BUNDLE includes ALL of the activities in my Alphabet Printables and Alphabet Centers. This mega bundle is also at my TpT Store. You can click on the picture to check it out and SAVE:

Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful week! :)