Wondering how to introduce the “other” type of letter? Whether you start by teaching your little ones lowercase letters or uppercase letters, a great way to introduce the other is with matching. As I always say, keep it slow and fun. Here is a fun game to play with matching letters that I wrote about last year:

As well, be sure to check out my Quiet Bins for tons of letter learning ideas little ones can do all on their own.

We have been playing with letters of the alphabet for quite some time in our house.  I like to encourage my kids to  ‘play’ with the letters and alphabet recognition activities, keeping the learning fun and meaningful.  Most of the time, we simply have the letters out in the play room, or on the floor with sticky tape, and as we are playing games just happen naturally.  Once in awhile we do an actual letter matching game.

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This morning while Madeline (11) was doing some writing at the kitchen table, Sammy (3.5) decided he would like to learn something new.  I asked him if he wanted to play with some letters, and he said he did, but he wanted to learn about the ‘little’ ones.  We have been playing with uppercase letters up to this point, using lowercase once in awhile with names or in environmental print.  So he does know that they exist, but we haven’t spent much time playing with them.

I thought I would make it a very fun introduction – using very few letters and a fun new tool.

Ideally I would have used the letters of Sammy’s name, but I didn’t have the right magnet letters … so we made do and used what we had.

For this Letter Matching Game:

We Used:

a cookie sheet

magnet alphabet letters (6 uppercase and 6 matching lowercase)

flour

a blush brush 🙂

How we played:

First, I put the alphabet letters on the cookie sheet.  I also gave Sammy a piece of paper with the 6 letters written on it and we talked about them.  He told me the letters he recognized (all of the uppercase) and a few of the lowercase too (mostly the ones that looked the same, and also the ‘a’ from his name).

Next I sprinkled flour over the magnet letters.

Then he went on an excavation – just like in our dinosaur dig – using the blush brush (I believe this is what most archeologists use).  When he discovered a letter he tried to match it to his piece of paper.  A simple letter matching game.

Once Sam found all of the letters, he took them out and matched them to the letters on the piece of paper.

And finally, he then used the blush brush to draw pictures in the flour 🙂

This was a fun way for Sammy to be introduced to uppercase and lowercase letters.  We used only a few letters, made it simple and easy, and a little messy too.

Matching upper and lower case letters will be our next venture in alphabet learning.  Slow and steady – we’ll get there!  Lots more letter matching games heading your way!

For more ideas on helping little ones learn all about the ABCs please check out my book: A Year of Educational Quiet Bins: The secret to peaceful days at home with kids.