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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
You’ll be hard pressed to find a kindergarten student who doesn’t love a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They are the ultimate comfort food, as can be seen in the grocery store aisles where you can buy premade sandwiches for lunchboxes! You can tap into this by having a tasting party with different types of peanut butter (think nut butters!) and different flavors of jelly to help each student find their perfect pairing. Then, you should use this fun peanut butter and jelly alphabet match game which will have your students matching uppercase and lowercase versions of each letter.
The Science Of Letter Recognition
When you stop to think about it, the ability of the human brain to see a specific set of shapes (aka letters) and match them to sounds that it hears and can produce is an incredible feat. Add on to this the complexity of uppercase and lowercase letters, different fonts and different handwriting styles, and it’s amazing that any student learns to read at all. However, research has shown that the best way to teach letter recognition is one letter at a time, with plenty of repeated practice linking the letter to its name and the sound it makes. These alphabet match puzzles help students to make that connection as well as learning what the uppercase and lowercase version of each letter looks like.
Preparing This Food Theme Activities for Kindergarten
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Teaching With Peanut Butter And Jelly Alphabet Match cards
These fun food theme activities for kindergarten have students match up the letters using the concept of peanut butter and jelly, as well as shaped puzzle pieces, to help them get the match right every time. Some possible ways to include this in your literacy centers include:
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Regular review – throughout your kindergarten year, you’ll cover one or two letters per week. This find the matching letter game can be used either as a full alphabet set or just a few at a time to reinforce the learning that has happened so far.
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Sorting game – Asking students to sort the cards by whether the shape changes between lowercase and uppercase or by how many straight lines there are both great food theme activities for kindergarten to get them thinking deeper about the letters themselves.
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Partner call out – finally, any time that you can make a literacy center into a partner game, you straight away get some SEL into your core curriculum instruction. A simple game to play is to give one student all the peanut butter cards, and the other all the jelly cards. The first picks a letter and says its name (or its sound) without revealing the card. The other student then has to quickly find the matching letter in their set. You can easily pair up your students using my Food Friends Pick A Partner Cards!
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 full bundle here!
Alphabet Books We Love:
More Free Food Themed Printables:
1) Burger Stand Math Fun – This burger-themed printable will help your students do simple addition in their heads in such a fun way and introduce them to the concept of calculating money as they manage a pretend cafe.
2) Fruit and Vegetable Color Clipcards – Preschoolers and kindergarteners will learn to identify colors while working on their fine motor strength.
3) Peanut Butter and Jelly Alphabet Matching – 2 piece puzzles where your students will learn to match upper to lowercase letters.
4) Ice Cream Measurement Cards – Kids work on math and measurement in this summer-themed ice cream printable.
5) Count The Marshmallows 1-10 – Kids love marshmallows – eating them, playing with them, and now, they’ll love counting them too!
6) Gingerbread Number Puzzle Strips – Set of 3 differentiated gingerbread-themed number puzzles including one with dice representation.
7) Farmers Market Activities Pack – This pack of 5 activities is the perfect opportunity for kids to learn about healthy eating.
8) Autumn Apples I Spy – 3 differentiated levels of I Spy games perfect for an apple-themed learning unit.
9) Fruit and Vegetable Activity Pack – Preschool fruit and vegetable activity pack of 5 printable games.
10) Watermelon 4-piece Number Puzzles – These 4-piece watermelon number puzzles will keep your children entertained while working on early math skills like number recognition, counting and subitizing.
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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