6 Easy Alphabet Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

6 Easy Alphabet Activities For Toddlers

Hi everyone!  Today I wanted to share a roundup of some of our favorite and EASIEST activities to get your toddler and preschooler practicing the alphabet!  My whole method to teaching letter names and letter sounds revolves around playful exposure.  I like to set up simple and fun activities with toys that my daughter loves so she’s more motivated to play and also materials that we already have around the house.  The less stress I put on the learning, the more laid back and fun we can have with it.  I try and do an alphabet activity at least 4-5 times a week and she is really starting to pick up on the letter names now!  She just turned 3 and I am in NO rush for her to master them because developmentally, it will come when she is ready.  But, if she continues to enjoy these activities, I will continue to create them!

These 6 easy alphabet activities are perfect for your toddlers and preschoolers and engages them in many different ways.  I hope you can take these ideas and run with them in your own home!

If you have a large collection of character figurines taking up space in your playroom like we do, then this activity is perfect for you.  It doesn’t have to be Disney princesses like our current obsession, but I highly recommend using your little ones’ most loved toys to your advantage!  Paw Patrol?  Peppa Pig? Animals? Sesame Street?  They all work here!

To set this activity up, I simply wrote capital letters onto five different strips of painters tape.  If you don’t have painters tape, grab some!  It is one of our most used supplies.  Then, I used dot stickers to label my daughter’s collection of Disney figurines.  If I had one whose name started with that letter then I tried to match it but if not they just got random letters and it worked just fine.  We picked a princess or character, looked at the sticker, and matched them on the alphabet line together.  Such a playful way to practice!

This fridge tape alphabet line and magnet match took under 5 minutes to prep and will keep your little ones occupied for a few days!  It was so perfect for when I needed to make breakfast or dinner and needed Little Miss Toddler engaged in an activity but wants to be close by.  To set this up I wrote out lowercase letters onto 5 strips of painters tape.  I then set out our lowercase letter magnets for her to match the letters to.  You can do this with uppercase and lowercase matching, letters of their name matching, number matching, the list is endless.

This easy alphabet activity is perfect for your block lovers!  To set this up, I used a whiteboard marker to write on our MegaBloks with a few capital and lowercase letters.  I used some of our colorful paper to write the matching letters onto them for our simple matching mats.  I then placed them around the room and had Little Miss Toddler hunt for the letters.  She loved finding the letters and matching them to our matching mats.  We talked about the little letters and the big letters, words that start with those letters, and their sounds.

Next up is building letter towers that leads right into independent play!  My favorite and always the goal for all our activities at home.  The best part?  The letters wipe right off and there are so many other variations to this.  Use it with numbers, letters in their name, matching capital and lowercase letters, rhyming words, sight words.  The possibilities are really endless.

This alphabet activity is so simple to set up which makes it one of my favorites!  I grabbed a few paper plates, a marker, dot stickers, and large alphabet stickers that I had from Target a few years ago but any alphabet sticker or just writing the letter will do.  I love a small list of materials!  I wrote the same letters that you have on each plate onto the dot stickers.  For our version, I chose a few letters that we have been working on but you could spell out your child’s name if you wanted to!  Write those letters on a few different colored dot stickers, and set them out for your little one to sort. I don’t know what it is about paper plates but it just makes the activity slightly different enough that it turns it on its head!

Popsicle stick puzzles are a classic activity we love so much!  We have used them multiple times for shape activities but thought it was a good time to introduce some alphabet versions of this classic too.  This is a perfect example of a hands-on approach to learning and practicing letter names and uppercase and lowercase.  To set this up is super simple (the name of the game here)! I used large popsicle sticks and taped them together to help me draw the different capital and lowercase letters on both sticks at the same time.  Using the different colored crayon helped my daughter identify the matches because she is still learning all of her letters.

I took out the same 8 letter puzzle pieces that we were building so she could use them to help solve the letter puzzles.  This was a quick but super engaging way to practice the beginning of the alphabet!  Use this to build your little ones name, match shapes, build more of the alphabet, sight words, addition/subtraction problems, so many variations.

There is something so good about the combination of soap, water, and a toddler.  Am I right?!  They just can’t resist it.  That’s why these letter sponges are the perfect thing to throw into a soapy water sensory bin for some easy and fun alphabet practice.  Have your child make you some alphabet soup and talk about the letters they use in their bowls.  Or, prepare a matching mat for them to match their letter sponges too for some added practice.  As your child gets older, you can have them spell sight words with the sponges in the soapy sensory bin as well.

I hope that these 6 easy alphabet activities for toddlers have given you some hands-on ideas to use at home!  These ideas are meant to be used to engage your child in fun and meaningful activities while also teaching them and exposing them to the alphabet.  Teaching your child letter names and sounds can be done in a playful and exciting way!