Drawing and crafting are favorite activities for every school-aged child, and there’s no reason why we can’t use that love of art to our advantage when teaching them important skills. Teaching our youngest students the alphabet can be a little easier when using letter crafts to help reinforce letter names and shape recognition. If you have been around my blog for any amount of time, you know how much I love using anchor charts in my lessons. However, crafts are also a big part of my classroom. I am so excited to share some of my favorite alphabet crafts with you.
Weaving in Fine Motor Skills with Academics
Students are using technology more and more as part of the learning process. With that comes great opportunities for learning. But there are just some things that don’t work as well on technology. Fine motor skills are one of those things! Sometimes it feels like we are drifting away from the important activities that require essential fine-motor skills. That’s why I focus so heavily on giving my students so many opportunities to craft and create while learning a new concept or skill. It’s a great way to keep the focus on academics while intentionally providing fine motor activities too!
Interactive Letter Folders
One of my favorite ways to craft using the alphabet is with interactive letter folders. These adorable letter folders allow students several opportunities to practice forming and identifying the focused letter.
Focus Letter Characters
I start by giving my students a folded piece of 12X18 construction paper. Students “build” their uppercase and lowercase letters at the same time.
Each letter craft turns the letters into a recognizable object starting with the focus letter. This helps your students to remember the letter name and sound as they progress through the week. These letters also coordinate with our class anchor chart which provides a great brain connection to our lesson.
Once they have created their letter character, they glue the capital on one side and the lowercase on the other. These are so incredibly cute and my students always love finding out what type of character they will be turning their letters into.
These letter characters become the cover for their interactive letter folders. Not only are they cute, but they provide a visual representation of the letter formation as well as the sound and words that start with the sound.
Beginning Sound Practice
My students love completing the beginning sound practice cards. This is a great opportunity for students to practice writing the letters in both capital and lower-case. There is also a picture included with each card which students absolutely love to color. These beginning sound cards are a great way to build vocabulary into your alphabet lessons too!
If you are looking to differentiate for more skilled students, let them come up with their own words for the letter and draw a picture. They can then practice writing the uppercase and lowercase letter on the bottom or write out the word for their picture.
We do a little more beginning sounds practice with a coloring activity that goes on the inside of our alphabet folder. Here students color the items with the target sound. It’s a great way to reinforce the sound and vocabulary.
Letter Formation Practice
While building the letter for the front of the folder provides an example of the proper letter formation, students need lots and lots of handwriting practice. In addition to the beginning sounds cards, students will practice tracing and writing the letter. Using the letter formation activity helps students learn to correctly write the focus letter in both upper and lowercase styles.
Directed Drawing
This is definitely a crowd-pleaser in my classroom! The students absolutely love learning how to draw different objects for each letter of the alphabet. They always feel so proud of themselves when they see their finished drawings. The directed drawing is simple and includes easy steps to create a drawing of an image that begins with the focused letter’s beginning sound.
Directed drawing is such a great activity for our young students. It helps them practice their fine motor skills as well as learn how to follow step-by-step directions. It’s also great for helping them to learn to notice details and changes.
Sometimes we complete these directed drawings as a class and other times I let the students work independently.
What I love about these directed drawings is watching to see these pictures and images appear in other parts of our day. The students are so proud of their new drawing abilities that they often add them to their stories during writer’s workshop too!
The Finished Product
When students are finished creating their alphabet folder they have a finished product that is filled with fun alphabet learning. You can’t go wrong with teaching the alphabet and reinforcing letter recognition, letter writing, sounds and more! Check out this complete Letter D alphabet folder.
Alphabet Directed Drawings and Crafts
All of the letter activities and crafts included in the letter folder are fun and engaging for your students. They also help your students practice letter identification, formation, and sounds in so many different ways. We all know practice makes perfect, but fun and interactive practice builds mastery! I would love for you try them out in your classroom. Just grab the FREE Letter Z Alphabet Crafts and Directed Drawing set and get started today.
Grab your A to Z Letter Crafts
I can tell you from years of experience that using crafts in your learning process will help your students learn the material quicker and with more understanding than just memorization alone. Grab the complete set of Interactive Alphabet Crafts and Directed Drawings in the Emily Education Store.
In addition to these crafts, I have a corresponding resource that creates anchor charts and includes tons more activities for you to engage the children through repetition, fun poems, and problem solving while learning each letter and their corresponding sounds.
Save these Alphabet Crafts and Ideas
Pin these fun alphabet crafts to your favorite classroom Pinterest board. Your students will not only love learning the alphabet but they will work on important phonics and fine motor skills too!
