How to Pre-Preschool–Part 3: Easy Letter of the Week Activities

Check out the first two parts of this series–Part 1: Calendar Time and Part 2: Learning Board.

Welcome to Part 3 of how to Pre-Preschool, Letter of the Week Activities. Let me tell you all the things you need to know to do Pre-Preschool this way.

Understand that I introduced these three aspects of our Pre-Preschool gradually. First we started the Calendar for about two weeks, and then I introduced the Learning Board. We did just those two things for about a month before I realized that my oldest was ready for more. He picked up on those weekly letters and numbers faster than I expected and constantly wanted more, more, more.

And so I devised this third phase of our Pre-Preschool, which are the weekly letter activities.

This right here, these letter-based activities, is what I eventually started calling “Pre-Preschool.” None of it is sit-down worksheets or drilling letters and sounds, but it’s meant to be a fun and interesting introduction to letters. It also gives us some direction for doing fun, toddler-based activities throughout the day.

Things to Know Before You Begin

• These are SIMPLE activities on purpose, many of which I was already doing in our daily lives.

Many of these activities I invented totally spontaneously, so most of the supplies you need you likely already have. You’re welcome. As for things we already did together regularly, like reading and baking, now I simply emphasized, “We’re making cookies today and ‘cookie’ begins with the letter C. C says, ‘cuh-cuh-cuh’ like cuh-cuh-cookie!” And I simply reiterated statements like that throughout the activity over and over. Easy.

I’m not an advocate for hammering academics into preschoolers. I don’t believe that young kids should be forced to fill out worksheets, be drilled in memorizing sight words, or be tested in any way, shape, or form. So instead my letter activities are very play-based and, as I said earlier, are usually based on things we were already doing around our house together.

• Keep it easy!

I quickly found that some letters are more difficult than others, namely vowels and letters with soft and hard sounds.

For vowels, I did try to teach that they have two sounds: “A says ah-ah like apple, and A also says ay-ay like angel.” So you’ll see some vowel activities that use both their short and long sounds.

Also, be careful with vowels because they technically can have all sorts of sounds depending on the word.

For example, for Aa I first looked at the movie Aladdin, until I realized that A actually had more of an “uh-uh-Aladdin” sound, so I skipped that one. Pick words/activities/books/movies with very clear sounds so not to cause any confusion.

I also didn’t teach the soft Cc or the soft Gg; they are exactly the same as Ss and Jj and so I didn’t want to confuse anyone. Nope, I strictly taught that Cc says “cuh-cuh-cat” (not city or cent) and G says “guh-guh goat” (not giraffe or gem).

Just be aware. This is only Pre-Preschool, remember, and we have years and years to talk about the difficult complexities of the English language. But not today!

• No, I didn’t do one of these letter activities every single day.

Typically we did about three letter activities every week, sometimes more or sometimes less. Some letters simply lend themselves to more activities while others don’t; Pp for example has a rather long list of ideas, where the much more difficult Qq only has a few.

Xx doesn’t have any. We didn’t do a single Xx activity that week because Xx is a freaking hard letter to teach and to understand.

(Seriously, we already have “z” for words like xylophone and “cks” for words like box; I’m going to start a petition that we change these, and like words, into “zylophone” and “bocks” and get rid of x all together!).

Yes, you’ll see some letters in the following list have many, many suggestions for activities, but that doesn’t mean that I personally did all of them that week or that I think you should too.

Instead, know that the following list combines activities that I actually did, ones that I wanted to do but didn’t have time for, or ones that I thought of after the fact and wished that I’d done. I’m keeping them all here on this comprehensive list so that I can refer back to it in the future for when my youngest is ready for pre-preschool.

*Note: I’ve edited this post after going through the alphabet with my boys a second time with even more activities that we discovered our second time through. Again, I’m mostly trying to keep a comprehensive list both for you and for myself, hence the edit.*

• There are some reoccurring activities and that’s okay.

You’ll see that sometimes we baked the same things, did the same crafts, or read the same books. Remember that these are spaced out by weeks.

So yes, I feel perfectly justified in baking cookies for the letter Cc and then baking cookies again nineteen weeks later for Vv, but then emphasizing the vuh-vuh-vanilla instead of the cuh-cuh-cookie. And I just really like homemade cookies, okay?

• Read books and watch movies from your own collection.

The books and movies I have listed here are simply ones that we already own. There’s no hard and fast rule that you have to use the ones I suggested. There are tons of options out there, so just follow your own little heart and find whatever books and movies you want.

Seriously, most of the time I randomly flipped through our books until I luckily found one with that week’s letter somewhere in the title. And that’s okay.

• Practice your child’s name!

Not listed here are the name activities I did with my boys. My boys’ initials are R and A, so when we learned those letters I made a big deal of saying, “This is the letter for your name!”

It was a good opportunity to practice tracing or painting their names with various art supplies. There are lots of ideas for learning names floating out there on the internet, and take advantage of those during your child’s name’s letter week.

• Utilize YouTube.

Another reoccurring activity you’ll see is that we YouTube a lot of videos to learn about new things, mostly animals.

I started this because sometimes we came to pictures on our Learning Board’s letter flashcards that my boys didn’t know. What the heck even is a jellyfish anyway? And so I’d open my computer and look up some pictures and videos. In fact, I myself learned some really interesting things about all sorts of animals from these YouTube videos.

In regards to the videos, I specify here to search, “Learn about jellyfish for kids.” I find that those searches, especially “for kids,” brings up the best results. There are whole YouTube channels devoted to making mini-documentaries for kids, which are both short enough to keep their attention and informative enough to be fun.

Also, I try to repeat and emphasize some interesting facts about these animals as we watch. “Wow,” I’d say, “The tiger is the biggest cat in the world and can swim!” And then after the video we’d review those facts: The tiger is the biggest cat in the world and can swim. In fact, my boys loved learning about animals so much in this way that they really retained these little details and could often repeat them to my husband or their grandparents days or weeks later, which was always really fun for them.

But you can also use YouTube to learn about things other than animals. My boys’ most favorite thing in the entire world was when they asked what a unicycle is (it was on our Uu flashcard) and so we looked up “unicycle tricks.” They LOVED watching these really cool dudes jump, spin, and grind all over the place on unicycles; it was definitely a highlight and they totally understood what a unicycle was after that day.

• When decorating a weekly letter, make it fun, not perfect!

I have to talk to you about making and decorating the weekly letter. We didn’t do this every single week, far from it. In fact, I didn’t even start making letters like these with my boys until we got to the letter Hh, for which we made a big handprint H (this is why you won’t see any pictures of decorated letters for A-G, because we didn’t make any). Remember I said that we did all this Pre-Preschool stuff gradually.

To make their letters, I usually draw the letter with a thick sharpie on construction paper and then cut it out beforehand. Then we decorate it in whatever way we planned. And of course we put their decorated letters on the fridge for the week.

Most of my decorations I made up myself and I used art and craft supplies we already had on hand: construction paper, paint, pipe cleaners, hole punches, crayons, etc. But every now and then I looked on Pinterest for ideas, and there are millions and millions of ideas out there, trust me. Like seriously, Pinterest is a little overwhelming sometimes…all the time.

But by far the most important thing I can tell you about decorating letters is this: PINTEREST ISN’T REAL! YOUR CHILD’S ORIGINAL WORK WILL NOT LOOK PINTEREST-WORTHY! WHATEVER CUTE CRAFT YOU SEE ON PINTEREST WAS DONE BY AN ADULT, NOT A CHILD. DON’T DESTROY YOUR CHILD’S CREATIVITY BY HOLDING THEM TO IMPOSSIBLE PINTEREST STANDARDS. SERIOUSLY.

The point of these letter crafts is threefold: First, to introduce the shape and sound of the letter. Second, to give opportunities to practice fine motor skills like coloring, cutting, and gluing. Third, to let my boys be creative! Let them color funky, clashing colors or glue the googley eyes in weird places or scribble all over it to their heart’s content!

• We learned our letters in alphabetical order.

I’ve read a lot of articles saying to do the exact opposite: don’t teach letters in order. You can find different lists that people have compiled for better orders to learn letters, starting with easy letters and ending with difficult ones like Qu and Xx. Stinking Xx.

And I get it. I totally do.

But this is Pre-Preschool. Remember, I’m not drilling or forcing anything; this is just an introduction. On the plus side, we sang the ABCs song every Monday to see what letter came next, which my boys loved. And that worked wonderfully for us.

• I don’t have a set “Pre-Preschool Time” of the day when we do these activities.

In my previous posts about how to Pre-Preschool, I said that I usually start our mornings by doing our Calendar and Learning Board back-to-back, which usually doesn’t take more than 20 minutes or so.

But we don’t immediately follow our Learning Board with these activities…unless we just so want to that day. Some activities, particularly artsy ones, I try to save for the afternoon when my baby is sleeping (and his grabby, destructive hands are sleeping too). Or sometimes we do several throughout the day: a YouTube video immediately following the Learning Board (to clarify what the heck that jellyfish actually is), an artsy activity that afternoon, and later reading a book right before bedtime.

Honestly here’s the bottom line: Do what works for you. There’s no law that says exactly what kind of Pre-Preschool you have to do or how or when. So be flexible! Follow your child’s lead and have fun with it.

Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let’s begin.

Letter of the Week Activities

Aa

• Do Apple stamping art
• Eat Apples with caramel dip
• Bake an Apple treat
• Read “The Great Escape of Marvin the Ape”
• Watch “Alice in Wonderland” movie
• YouTube “Learn about Alligators for kids”

Bb

• Glue Buttons into B shape
• String Beads on pipe cleaner and Bend it into a B shape
• Bake Banana Bread
• Build (or paint, decorate, etc.) a Birdhouse or Birdfeeder
• Go on a Blue color hunt: look around your house and take a picture of anything Blue
• Blow up Balloons
• Read “Berenstain Bears” books
• Read “Harvey Potter’s Balloon Farm”
• Read “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”

Cc

• Bake Cookies
• Dress up in Costumes
• Color with Crayons
• Read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”
• Read “Clifford the Big Red Dog” books
• Watch “Cars” movie

Dd

• Draw a picture of your Dad
• Visit a Dinosaur museum
• Feed Ducks
• Have a Dance party
• Dig in the Dirt and/or plant something
• Read “Don’t Push the Button”
• Read “Just Going to the Dentist”
• Watch “101 Dalmations” movie
• YouTube “Learn about Dinosaurs for kids”

Ee

• Use elephant hole punch and glue elephants into E shape
• Play with Easter Eggs
• Play a listening game with your Ears; play/record and guess various sounds
• Sing “Do Your Ears Hang Low”
• Read “Stand Back, Said the Elephant, I’m Going to Sneeze”
• Read “Green Eggs and Ham”
• Read “Elmer”
• YouTube “Learn about Elephants for kids”

Ff

• Form the letter F with Feathers
• Have a campFire and roast marshmallows
• Visit a Farm
• Trace Footprints with chalk outside to make a trail to Follow
• Sing “Old MacDonald had a Farm”
• Read “The Foot Book”

Gg

• Eat Grapes
• Visit Grandma and Grandpa
• Go on a Green color hunt: look around your house and take a picture of anything Green
• Read “Green Eggs and Ham”
• Read “The Giving Tree”
• Read “Three Billy Goats Gruff”
• YouTube “Learn about Gorillas for kids”

Hh

• Trace Handprints onto paper in the shape of H
• Make H-shaped Houses with popsicle sticks glued to paper
• Go on a Hike
• Play superHeroes
• Play Hopscotch
• Sing “My Hands upon my Head I Place”
• Sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”
• Sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It”
• Read “Dex: the Heart of a Hero”
• Read “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb”
• Read “Horton Hears a Who”
• Read “Harold’s Purple Crayon”

Ii

• Make Icky shaving cream puffy paint; paint into the shape of I
• Ice cream cone art: hole punch Ice cream scoops, count and glue them into a stack
• Paint with colored Ice cubes: mix food coloring in water and then freeze into Ice cube trays with an inserted popsicle stick. Once frozen, take the Ice cubes out and color with them on white paper, holding the popsicle stick like a handle
• Eat Ice cream or Ice cream sandwiches
• Read “Inside Outside Upside Down”
• Watch “The Incredibles” movie (point out the letter I on their super suits)

Jj

• Make a Jellyfish J
• Drink different kinds of Juice
• Jump rope
• Tell Jokes
• Make Jingle bell necklaces (tie a Jingle bell onto a string)
• Use sidewalk chalk (for outside) or blue tape (for inside) and make the letter J on the ground; Jump along the J
• YouTube “Learn about Jellyfish for kids”

Kk

• Make a Kite K
• Fly Kites
• Play with Kinetic sand (and teach the word Kinetic)
• Kick the K: write various letters on paper and hang them from a string. Have the kids Kick every K they can find
• Read “The Color Kittens”

Ll

• Make a Lined L
• Play Chutes and Ladders
• Play with Legos
• Cut yarn and lay it out as Long, Longer, and Longest
• Compare things in your house that are Little and big
• Make and drink Lemonade
• Make Leaf stamping art; paint a Leaf and press it onto the paper like a stamp
• Read “The Tawny, Scrawny Lion”
• YouTube “Learn about Lions for kids”

Mm

• Make a Monster M
• Draw a picture of your Mom
• Drive up to the Mountains
• Roast Marshmallows
• Make a Marble run
• Play with Magnet tiles
• Play Tumbling Monkeys game
• Make Music; make bucket drums and sing songs
• Read “If You Give a Moose a Muffin”
• Watch “Monsters Inc.” Movie

Nn

• Make a N with a Nest
• Eat Noodles
• Go on a Nature Walk
• Do something Nice; take a treat to a Neighbor
• Watch “Finding Nemo” movie

Oo

• Make an Octopus O
• Eat Oranges
• Go on an Orange color hunt: look around your house and take a picture of anything Orange
• Read “Owen”
• YouTube “Learn about Octopuses for kids”
• YouTube “Learn about Ostriches for kids”

Pp

• Puffy Paint a P
• Eat Pizza
• Have a Picnic at the Park
• Go on a Purple color hunt: look around your house and take a picture of anything Purple
• Do Puzzles
• Play with Play-Doh
• Read “Poky Little Puppy”
• Read “If You Give a Pig a Pancake”
• Watch “Peter Pan” movie
• YouTube “Learn about Penguins for kids”

*Bonus! My oldest just so happened to start potty training during the week we learned Pp, so we emphasized a lot how to go Pee Pee and Poopy in the Potty. That’s three Pp’s in one!

Qq

• Build a Quilt/blanket fort
• Snuggle in your favorite Quilt to read a story/watch a movie
• Make and decorate paper king and Queen crowns

Rr

• Scratch off Rainbow paper in R shape
• Make Rainbow R
• Run a Race in the backyard
• Go on a Red color hunt: look around your house and take a picture of anything Red
• Read “Rumplestiltskin”
• Watch “Robots” movie

Ss

• Make a Snake S decorated with Squares
• Go Swimming
• Play on the Swings
• Go on a walk and look for Stop Signs
• Play Sorry
• Play with kinetic Sand
• Sing Songs
• Read “Stellaluna”
• YouTube “Learn about Snakes for kids”

Tt

• Make a Tree T
• Eat Toast
• Eat Tater Tots
• Play with Trains and Train Tracks
• Sleep in a Tent in the backyard (or a blanket Tent in the living room)
• Read “The Tortoise and the Hare”
• YouTube “Learn about Tigers for kids”

Uu

• Go on a walk with Umbrellas (or, if weather allows, play in the rain with Umbrellas)
• Make a blanket fort and go Under the blankets to read a story
• Visit/make cards or treats for your Uncles
• Read “Great Day for Up”
• Watch “Up” movie
• YouTube “Unicycle tricks”

Vv

• Make a Velcro V decorated with oVals
• Eat Vanilla ice cream
• Bake cookies and use Vanilla
• Decorate a V with scraps of soft Velvet
• Make salt-dough Volcanoes and erupt them with Vinegar and baking soda
• Read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”
• Read “The Velveteen Rabbit”
• Watch “I Lava You” Pixar short (from Inside Out)
• YouTube “Volcano eruptions”

Ww

• Eat Watermelon
• Go on a Walk with the Wagon
• Paint with Watercolor paints
• Play with Wooden blocks
• Play in Water; a Water table, swimming pool, or bathtub
• Sing “Wheels on the Bus”
• YouTube “Learn about Walruses for kids”

Xx

Yy

• Eat Yogurt
• Make a Yarn Y
• Do Yoga for kids
• Paint suns with Yellow paint
• Go outside and Yell
• Go on a Yellow color hunt: look around your house and take a picture of anything Yellow

Zz

• Go to the Zoo
• YouTube “Learn about Zebras for kids”

For more ideas of how I Pre-Preschool, check out the first two parts of this series. Part 1: Calendar Time and Part 2: Learning Board.