Alphabet Pick-up Sticks ~ Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s

Juliette is really excited about learning her letters and the sounds they make.  She sings the ABC song all day, and we are working on recognizing the names and sounds the letters make.  Since both Emily and Juliette always seemed to enjoy learning when we were playing games I put together this Alphabet Pick-up Sticks game for a fun way to practice recognizing letters and their sounds.

To make this game all you need are:

• 27 large craft sticks
• letter stickers and one fun sticker or a permanent marker
• a cup

Take 1 of the craft sticks and place the fun sticker at one end or you can use a permanent marker to make a design on the end, like I did for ours.

If you are using stickers put a letter sticker on one end of  each of the craft sticks, or you can just use the permanent marker to write each letter at the end of the craft sticks.

Once you have all the craft sticks labeled place them  with the letters end down into the plastic cup.  Now you are ready to play!!

 

Have your little one pick one stick from the cup. 

 

If they pull a letter stick they will either tell you the letter they picked or the sound the letter makes, depending on what you want to have them practice.  If they get the letter correct they get to keep the stick.  If they get it incorrect tell them the letter and then have them put the stick back into the cup and the next player goes. 

If they pull the stick with the fun sticker/permanent marker design then they have to put all of their sticks back into the cup, and the next player goes. 

When we played this game we set a timer for 5 minutes and when the timer went off the person with the most sticks was the winner.  You can pick a time based on your child’s age and attention span.  I like to begin with a shorter time so that we end on a positive not and not with her getting bored and walking away from the game. 

Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s is a bi-monthly feature that focuses on practical and simple ideas that you can do at home to help your tot develop their letter and number skills.