Alphabet Practice: Letter Recognition Games and Tools

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the freedom to change things up, as needed, to help my little guy learn and retain the information that we are covering. But, even if you don’t homeschool, you probably enjoy working with your kiddos at home and I’m hoping you found yourself on my blog page because you are interested in new and fun ways to practice alphabet recognition! Welcome! I’m excited that you are here and I hope these games and tools will be helpful on your journey!

“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” Ignacio Estrada

And so…. these tools and games were born and borrowed out of my desperation. My little could not retain letters by simple repetition. Trust me… I spent months with posters hanging in our living room, on our fridge and in the bathroom. We repeated the letters and sounds over and over and still found that he was hanging up on certain letters. That’s when I realized that the problem was me. I wasn’t molding my teaching based on his learning needs and style. Once I started paying attention to how he learns best, we were making HUGE progress. I’m not saying that these tools are the answer for everyone, but I’m sharing what helped us on the chance that maybe it will help you too! Enjoy and feel free to comment with your ideas as well!

Here are the 10 Alphabet Games and Activities that we will be discussing in this blog:

1. Alphabet Bingo!
2. Color The Letter! Game
3. Homemade Play Dough and Letter Recognition
4. The “Letter Grab” Game
5. Letter Building with Dyed Rice
6. Alphabet Go-Fish!
7. Jumbo Drip Pans and Magnets
8. “Find the Missing Whale” Letter Game
9. “Find the Letter” Marble Game
10. Writing the Alphabet

Tip: Watch for the FREE DOWNLOADS! We have included lots of free goodies here to get you started!

Note: We participate in the Amazon Affiliate program, so some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small percentage on purchases that you make through this links, at no additional cost to you.

1. Alphabet Bingo: Free downloads available below for both the Alphabet Bingo Cards and the Alphabet Player Cards (draw pile). Use flat marbles (as pictured) or colorful Bingo chips, like these found on Amazon. We printed our cards on cardstock and laminated them, but that’s not necessary. It just makes them last longer. Play to fill a line or play to fill the card! Have fun while learning!

*If you want to buy a set of Alphabet Playing Cards that you can play multiple games with, I recommend these: Alphabet Go Fish Cards (only use one set of uppercase letters for the Bingo! game), or the Alphabet Slap Jack Cards (only use upper case cards for the Bingo! game).

2. “Color the Letter” Game: Free download of the card pictured available below. We enjoy this game because it involves alphabet recognition plus some coloring fun! Simply print two copies of the one available for download or build your own version (you will need a “key” copy).

I tend to color mine as we go, taking care that my little man can’t see my copy (clipboards work great for this!), but you can also do it ahead of time. Give your little person some crayons and start calling out some letters and colors… (color the “C” red)! They will think it’s fun to hunt the letter down and color it!

Tips: 1) I usually leave the ones that my kiddo struggles with closer to the end so that he has fewer choices. Sometimes that helps him remember what the letter looks like. 2) I try to make sure that if the letters look similar (Q and O), I make the colors different. 3) I tell my little guy not to guess. It confuses him more. Instead, we say “pass” and come back. If he still doesn’t know it, we save it until the end. That way, we can review the name of the letter without further confusion. Have fun!

3. Homemade Play Dough and Letter Building: We have an entire blog post dedicated to making homemade play dough with your little person! It includes the recipe and step-by-step instructions! My little guy loves to help make the play dough, choose the colors, and then build his letters with it! Bonus: if you keep it sealed in an airtight container, it will last a very long time. Visit our blog with the recipe and instructions by clicking here!

4. “The Letter Grab” Game: This game was actually where our love of alphabet recognition games was born! We would put his letters up on the board and he would get so excited running to the board, grabbing one he knew, announcing it, and running the card back to me! He would repeat this process until the only cards left were the letters that he was still learning.

It is a great way to encourage and cheer your little learner on as they find letters on the board, and then sit with them by the board afterwards and work on the letters that they struggles with. I can honestly say that my little guy learned a ton from this activity.

Best part? All you need are index cards, a marker, and some painter’s tape. You can use any wall in your house!

Want another option? Pick up these Alphabet Flash Cards on Amazon and use them to play the game! All you need are the flash cards and some painter’s tape!

5: Letter Building with Dyed Rice: We followed a fantastic tutorial, complete with step-by-step photos, at Blue & Hazel. You can find her tutorial here: https://blueandhazel.com/how-to-dye-rice-for-sensory-play.

The short and sweet of the recipe is to throw 1 cup of rice in a Ziploc bag. Add 1 teaspoon of rubbing alcohol to the bag of rice and then 10-15 drops of food coloring. Shake well and then pour the contents of the bag onto a paper towel (we used a glass casserole dish lined with paper towels) and set outside in the sun to dry.

After the colored rice was dry, we combined the different colors in a bowl and played a game using alphabet cards in a draw pile (free download below), along with an alphabet printout page (free download below), and a small pizza pan. First, we would draw a card, build the letter with rice, and then find the letter on the sheet and mark it off, all while continuing to discuss the name of the letter, the sound it makes, and words that start with that letter.

Things to know about this activity: 1) Once fully dry, the rice does not leave any color on your hands during this activity. 2) It does, however, leave rice dust all over your hands and anything you touch (clothes!). 3) We tried to pour the rice on the pizza pan and use our finger to “draw” the letters, but the rice moved around too much and we could not get good clean lines. We found more success in just pouring a bit of rice in and building the letter.

Free downloads of the alphabet cards and alphabet printout page below, or you can get Alphabet Go Fish cards here, Alphabet Flash Cards here, or Alphabet Slap Jack Cards here, to use in this game.

6. Alphabet Go-Fish: We have had an absolute blast playing this game! You can buy the deck for just under $6 on Amazon by clicking here. or you can print out four copies of our Alphabet Playing Cards (free download below). We did both just to see which one we liked best. I found that my little loved the color on the Amazon ones, but the if you want to save some money, print out two or four copies of the ones below, preferably on cardstock. We laminated ours so that they would last longer.

*Because of the size of the deck, we recommend that you break the deck in half and play with letters A-L first and then M-Z second.

*If your little player has small hands, we use this amazing card holder for kids that you can order from Amazon (click here).

7: Jumbo Oil Drip Pans and Alphabet Magnets: We love using these 2.5″ alphabet magnets on an oversize oil drip pan! Tip: Shop around for your oil drip pan because some places are really overpriced! You can find the magnets here.

Sometimes we just arrange the alphabet and other times mommy removes a letter and we have to find which one is missing. For more advanced little ones, start spelling small words and sounding them out. No matter what you do, jumbo magnet boards and magnets are always fun!

#8: “Find the Missing Whale” Letter Game: This game can be played with any type of material or animal cutout, but we found these paper whales at the Dollar Tree! We put letters on the whales and then placed them on a board (lying flat) in alphabetical order. Then, I randomly removed seven whales and placed them at the bottom of the board. Finding where the lost whales go required singing the alphabet over and over for each one until we got them all home. Great practice and lots of fun!!

9: “Find the Letter” Marble Game: There’s really nothing greatly special about this game, except that it travels easy (we created it on a road trip) and all of the supplies were found at Dollar Tree. It took small posters, large alphabet stickers, flat marbles and a small organization case to build and store this little game. On one poster, I put the alphabet stickers in alphabetical order. On the other poster, I put it them in a random order. Then, I would choose which poster to play with, call out a letter and he would pick a flat marble and place it on the letter. That’s it… super simple… but he thought it was a lot of fun!

Side note: I always encourage my little guy NOT to guess. If he doesn’t know a letter, just say that and we can work on it. Why? Because I find that he gets more confused when he starts guessing and it takes longer to learn to recognize the correct letter.

10: Practice Writing the Alphabet: This suggestion may seem super simple, but we found it very effective. I built a sheet where I would write out each letter (small and in a corner) and have him write the same letter in the box. I allowed him to go in whatever order he wanted. In other words, he jumped all over the page, typically going for the letters that he knew first and saving the unfamiliar ones for last. After each letter, he would call me over and we would discuss the name of that letter. Not only did I find that this practice helped him with letter recognition, but his handwriting was constantly improving as well! It was a super simple, yet super effective approach to letter recognition!

If you would like to download a free version of this alphabet writing page, see below. It’s not identical to the one pictured above, but is similar! Have fun!

That’s it, guys! I hope that you have found some inspiration, as well as some helpful tools and games! Drop a comment below and let me know if you have a fun alphabet recognition game that you would like to share! Have a great day and thanks for dropping by!

Below are the Amazon card games that we have found super helpful when practicing our alphabet! Bonus: All of these games, and the games above, make for some amazing family time!