Letter Learning Beach Style

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Name and Letter Learning Beach Style

Hi friends! I am pleased-as-punch to once again be sharing at B-Inspired Mama! Since spring is upon us in Texas, my two-year-old twins and I have been spending our days almost exclusively outside enjoying the gorgeous weather and playing in our giant new sandbox.  We were recently given a large box of shells of all different shapes and sizes to play with, and watching my little ones examine the various colors and textures sparked the idea for this letter learning activity.  I don’t normally advocate drilling alphabet letter recognition this young, but my daughter has recently shown a huge interest in letters and sounds, so I thought this might be a fun activity to build on that interest in a playful way.

Beachcomber Letter Learning Name Game

Creating this activity was super quick and easy, not to mention inexpensive.  Here are the materials I used:

• Scrap wood/driftwood

• Large sea shells

• Chalk

• Alphabet stickers

First, I wrote each child’s name on a piece of wood with chalk. These served as our matching boards.  If you don’t have scrap wood lying around your garage, you could always use small chalkboards or even just a pen and paper to create this part of the activity.

 

Next, I stuck letter stickers on the tops of the shells (one sticker per shell) to spell out each child’s name.

To set up the invitation, I simply placed each matching board in the sand and scattered the shells around the sandbox.  The idea was for the twins to find the letters of their names and match them to the corresponding letters on their name boards.

Success!  The twins had a great time playing with this set of materials.  We practiced matching the letters in their names and making their respective sounds while we hid and found the shells over and over again.    And since I used stickers rather than painting or otherwise permanently marking on the shells, I can peel off the letters when we are done and use the shells for something else.

I hope you enjoyed our little beach-inspired letter learning activity!  If you are looking for more playful ways to introduce letters to your little ones, my friend Mary Catherine from Fun-a-Day has a fantastic post on teaching children about letters that you should definitely check out- I love her teaching philosophy!

Thanks again for having me, Krissy…Twodaloo!

Stephanie is a speech-language pathologist specializing in early language and autism who is currently staying home with her two-year-old twins. She blogs about early childhood activities, creative projects, and parenting adventures (and mishaps) at Twodaloo. She can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and G+.

BRILLIANT!  I think sea shells and a sandbox would make any kind of learning more fun and exciting for kids.  So this is perfect for some summer letter learning.  Thanks so much for the awesome inspiration, Stephanie!

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