Delicious Alphabet Soup

Working on Letter Identification & Letter Writing

By Gary Kosman, PhD, and Grace Chiu

Use this activity to help your child learn to identify uppercase and lowercase letters, to help your child learn to write those letters, and to practice letters sounds.

MATERIALS

• Individual laminated, plastic or foam letters you can buy or make. (Alphabet Stencils are provided in our book )
• One large bowl
• One small bowl of water [Keep-it-clean alternative: Dont use water.]
• One ladle, large spoon or dipping spoon
• Paper and a pencil

STEP 1:
Fill half of the large bowl with water. You can add food coloring to the water to make it look like
actual soup. Put all of your laminated alphabet letters in the bowl.

STEP 2:
Let your child use the dipping spoon to scoop as many letters as he wants into the small bowl.

STEP 3:
Ask your child to scoop out the letter from the small bowl that he wants to pretend to eat.

STEP 4:
Ask your child to recognize the letter and to say its name out loud.

STEP 5:
After recognizing the letter, ask him to write that letter on the piece of paper.

Keep repeating steps three through six until your child has eaten all of the letters in the small bowl that he wants to.

EXTENSION ALPHABET ACTIVITY:
A bowl of alphabet soup makes a wonderful meal after this activity. You and you child can talk about what both of you thought about playing the game and can to scoop out certain letters from your bowls at the same time.

Gary Kosman and Grace May Chiu are the authors of Bonding While Learning: Activities to Grow Your Relationship While Preparing for Reading Success, which provides practical activities to share with toddlers and preschoolers to encourage speech, early reading, and interactive communication. This copyright protected article is reprinted on our site with permission of the authors.