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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
A rainy day always seems to spoil the fun in your preschool classroom. Not only does it usually mean indoor recess and all the associated frustrations that come with that, but it also means that everyone’s energy levels tend to be lower. Fortunately, these indoor days give you a perfect excuse to pick out this rainy day alphabet activity as part of your general weather literacy activities for preschool. These pick and dab alphabet matching worksheets can be used whatever the weather as your students will love the fun graphics and simple gameplay.
Teaching Letter Recognition
The learning goals for preschool literacy are at once both limited in scope and vast in range. They focus on having students be able to recognize the uppercase and lowercase version of all 26 letters, and to be able to say some (if not all!) the sounds that these letters make in different words. As with all essential preschool skills, the best way for students to achieve mastery is by repetition in a lot of different formats. This spring letter recognition game is another tool in your toolbox to help students match different formats of each letter, and the hands on pick and dab alphabet matching concept will keep them engaged until the sun comes out again.
Preparing Your Spring Letter Recognition Game
For this activity you will need:
Paper
Printer
Tokens to cover the letters they find
Optional: laminator
If you don’t have the materials needed, don’t sweat! You can get it delivered to your doorstep really quickly with Amazon Prime. You can get a 30-day free trial here.
Extension Activities For Your Rainy Day Alphabet
The premise behind this fun spring letter recognition game is simple. Students pick a raindrop letter card and then have to find it on the alphabet raining sheet. They can mark the letters that they found with a pompom or a sticker, or with a dry erase marker if you’ve chosen to laminate your set. To extend their learning try one of these activities:
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Find their name – a big part of early literacy in the preschool classroom centers around functional literacy skills such as students finding and reading their own name. You could use this rainy day alphabet packet to have students find the letters that make up their name in the raining sheet for extra practice.
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Partner call out – you can add a letter sound component to this pick and dab alphabet matching game by pairing students up. Give one student the set of raindrop letters (or a smaller subset if you haven’t covered all the letters yet!) and have them pick one at random and say its name out loud. Their partner can then find the letter on the alphabet sheet and compare answers. This teaches some co-operation and turn taking skills as well as oral letter sound practice. Use my Food Friends Pick A Partner Cards to easily pair up the students in your class!
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Match the starting sound – finally, you can use this spring letter recognition game to introduce the idea that all words are made up of sounds, and that all of these sounds are made up by letters. Starting sounds are a great introduction to this concept, so you could show students common classroom items that have an easy to identify starting sound (pencil, ruler, marker). Students have to say the object out loud and listen for the starting letter so that they can match it on their rainy day alphabet card.
HUGE bundle of no-prep alphabet worksheets!
There are 12 activities for each letter:
1) Alphabet Draw The Scene – Trace the upper and lowercase letters then imagine and draw the rest of the scene. For example, draw what the astronaut sees in space.
2) Letter Detective – Find and color in the boxes with the letter shown.
3) Cut, Sort and Stick –Differentiate upper and lowercase letter and sort them into the correct column.
4) Alphabet Puzzle Fun Sheets – No prep combination worksheets. Trace the letter, find the letter, draw something that begins with the letter and 4-piece puzzles to form the letter.
5) Alphabet Beginning Sounds Coloring Pages – Each letter coloring page comes with at least 6 objects.
6) Dot The Letter – These can be used with dot markers or dot stickers.
7) Q Tip Letters – Use a cotton bud to paint the letter.
8) Alphabet Handwriting – Correct letter writing technique is shown with space to trace upper and lowercase letters.
9) Letter Mazes – Identify the letters correctly to find the end of the maze.
10) Alphabet Playdough Mats – Fine motor strengthening activity to form the letters.
11) Alphabet Punch Cards – Letters are on the edge of the page for single hole punching or using with clips.
12) Alphabet Beginning Sound Clip Cards – 8 different sets included. Match the letter to the object (2 sets each for upper and lowercase) and match the object to the letter (2 sets each for upper and lowercase).
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Check out the whole Alphabet No Prep Busy Bundle here!
Alphabet Books We Love:
Other Spring Printables You’ll Love:
1) May Spring Printable Worksheets Pack – 50 pages of free printable worksheets including a variety of literacy, math, and fine motor activities.
2) Spring Flowers Draw and Count – Students will need to draw the number of flowers stated on the page.
3) Spring Code Words – Solve the coded puzzle to find out the Spring themed vocabulary words.
4) Spring Counting Clipcards – This activity is perfect for preschool number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and counting skills.
5) Spring Color By Number Pack – There are 6 spring-themed color-by-number pages included in this pack.
6) Bird Theme 3 Part Cards – Set up this free printable as proper 3 part cards for a spring literacy activity or as a preschool science center to help your students learn the names of different birds.
7) Weather Math Worksheets Pack – 9 different math worksheets inside this weather-themed activity pack for working on number order, shapes, counting etc.
8) Count The Kites 1-10 – Practice counting while strengthening their little hand muscles at the same time with this set of counting clip cards.
9) Raindrops Counting Frames – Keep your kids busy indoors with this rain-themed counting activity.
10) Missing Number Eggs – Practice counting from 1-20 with this cut and paste activity.
Educational Tools For Your Classroom:
Browse My Most Popular Literacy Activites:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages – Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.
3) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters – Work on letter recognition any time of the year!
6) Werewolf Spin and Cover – Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.
7) Bunny Burrows Game – Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.
8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging – Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.
9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets – Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.
10) Rainy Day Alphabet – 1 printable, many ways to use.
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