Upper and Lowercase Letter Matching Sensory Play

 

This activity has been in and out of our sensory table for the past 1-2 years, making an appearance every few months. It is such a fun and educational activity. Perfect to practice letter sounds and for the child to become familiar with upper and lower case letters.

 

I simply placed the lower case letters inside the bin with purple rice and set up the upper case letters on the right side of the sensory table. I kept it simple by providing one scoop, one small bowl and tongs.

 

The child can then enjoy looking for the letters inside the rice and matching it to the corresponding upper case letter on the right side of the table.

 

Remember to keep expectations low and allow the child to explore at her own pace. Perhaps the first time the child will match one letter and prefer to play with the rice. That is totally fine. Keep exposing the child to the activity and let go of attachments to simply observe.

 

We followed the Montessori approach for introducing letters, which means we focus first on letter sounds (phonics) rather than the letter names. This means that instead of reading the letter B (“bee”), we sound out the letter (“buh) (keeping the -uh- part short).

 

This helps children later combine sounds to make words. This way it becomes easier to form words when they know the sound – CAT for example – rather than letter names (See- Ay- Tee).