Alphabet Centers – Mrs Mama Bird

Happy February! I have been busy whipping up some fun and engaging Valentine’s Day themed alphabet activities for your preschoolers! I am excited to share some alphabet cover up mats, a roll and write game, an alphabet building mat, as well as an alphabet clip card in this post. Everything in this post is designed to help your preschoolers develop letter recognition, writing, and fine motor skills.

The idea behind this set of resources was to create several engaging activities that you could do with the SAME set of letter cards. My hope is that this saves some of your valuable time!! All you have to do is prep the cards once and you will have them ready to go for all of the activities in this post.

Alphabet cover up activities are always a go-to for practicing letter names and sounds. You can set the letter cards that you want to use (uppercase or lowercase) in a sensory bin for your preschoolers to find. They can take turns finding a letter, saying the name and/or sound, and covering it up on the mat. It’s always fun to add Valentine’s Day themed manipulatives for covering the letters. I am using Valentine heart table scatter from Hobby Lobby in the picture but you can also use mini erasers, flat marbles, pom poms or red or pink unifix cubes. If you don’t mind using the cover up mat only once, dot markers are always a fun choice too!

The cover up mats come in two variations – uppercase and lowercase letters. You can choose to have your preschoolers match uppercase to uppercase, uppercase to lowercase or lowercase to lowercase. The black and white version of each variation is also included if you prefer to print in black and white for single use on print on colored paper.

This set of activities also includes a Color the Room and Trace the Room recording sheet for both uppercase and lowercase letters. You can place the alphabet cards around the room and have your preschoolers find them and color or trace the matching letter on their sheet. My 4 year old loves doing these activities because it gets her up and moving around and because it is like a little game of hide and seek with letters.

If you have a pocket dice, the alphabet letters are perfect for making a Roll & Write game. Simply choose the letters that you want your students to practice writing, place them in the pocket dice and give them a copy of the Roll & Write recording sheet. Students can rolls the dice over and over while writing down the letter that they land on each time. Make it festive by using colorful red, pink and purple markers. If you don’t have a pocket dice, that’s okay! Put the letter cards of your choice in a draw pile or inside a bag to reach into and grab. This is a fun and engaging way to practice writing.

Don’t put the letter cards away yet!! The Say, Build & Write mat can be used with the letter cards in a draw pile or bag. Students can reach into the pile, grab a letter and place it on the mat. The mat will prompt them to say the name of the letter, say the sound of the letter, build the letter with manipulatives, and write the letter. You can decide to use these mats over and over by placing them in a page protector and using dry erase markers or copy them for single use to really focus on your letter of choice. The manipulatives that work well with this activity are mini erases, flat glass marbles, small cubes, or even playdough.

The last Valentine’s Day alphabet activity that I want to show you is the Find and Clip mats. These mats are designed to help preschoolers practice identifying and naming letters of the alphabet as well as strengthen fine motor skills. You can use these mats with or without the alphabet cards. If you choose to use the alphabet cards, you can present them face down in a draw pile. Have your students pick a letter card and clip the matching letter on the Find & Clip Mat. If you have the alphabet clips from Target, you can choose to just use those without the cards. It’s up to you!

I hope you were able to get some inspiration from this Valentine’s Day Alphabet Activities post. If you are interested in the activities highlighted in this post, click the icon below to visit my TpT shop.

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The week leading up to Thanksgiving is the perfect time to sneak in a little lesson about healthy food choices. One of my favorite books to introduce fruits and vegetables is Lois Ehlert’s Eating the Alphabet.

In this book, Ehlert uses vibrant illustrations to portray many different fruits and vegetables that begin with each letter of the alphabet. I designed a few activities that work well as companion activities before, during and after reading this book. They can also stand alone as fun activities and centers about fruits and vegetables for preschool and kindergarten.

Here are 63 word and picture cards that correspond with the fruits and vegetables introduced in the book, Eating the Alphabet. You can use these for participation cards, vocabulary, word walls, matching activities and to teach ABC order.

Emmett and I created a scavenger hunt with the Melissa and Doug Fruits and Vegetables. We also added a pumpkin from our fall décor! Emmett and I hid the produce items around the room. Then I showed him a picture and word card, he located the item and placed it next to the card. He loved this!!

For those kindergarteners that are ready to put words in alphabetical order, there are plenty of picture and word cards to create multiple sets to be manipulated and arranged. I designed three recording sheets, ranging from 4 words in a set to 6 words in a set. Students can arrange their word cards in alphabetical order and record them on their paper. Use this a center or make multiple stations around the room.

The next activity includes 47 colorful picture cards of fruits and vegetables. Again, these picture cards can be used in several ways, depending on your learners. In preschool, students can sort the picture cards by color. Today we talked about the idea of “eating the rainbow,” sorted the cards by color and pointed out fruits and vegetables that we like in each category. Emmett noticed there’s nothing purple that he likes, so I challenged him to find something purple to try next time we go to the grocery store. You could also talk about the difference between fruits and vegetables and sort the picture cards accordingly.

In preschool and kindergarten, these picture cards can be used to practice beginning sounds. I designed a sorting mat for each letter of the alphabet and created at least one picture card for each letter sound. I decided to use the most recent three letters that Emmett has learned to practice today. To be honest, there are a lot of produce items in the story that I don’t buy on a regular basis or have ever had before. We referenced the word and picture cards for some of the pictures and talked about how we’ve never had gooseberries before and would like to try them!

I also created two versions of this beginning sounds cover up mat. Each mat has 12 vibrant pictures of different produce from the story. There are alphabet cards included as well, but you can also use your own alphabet letters. This mat fits perfectly on a cookie sheet with magnetic letters.

Emmett is still learning his letter sounds, so he completed this activity with this Alphabet Linking Chart by his side. Whenever he needed to remember what sound a letter made, he checked his linking chart, said the corresponding name on the chart, and isolated the beginning sound. Then he was able to match the beginning sounds from the linking chart to the beginning sounds of the pictures on the Cover Up Mat. (Click HERE if you need a linking chart. It’s FREE!!)

Finally, here’s a look at the Fruits and Vegetables Alphabet Flash Cards and Letter Draw activity. The flash cards, again, have so many uses. You can have your preschoolers and kindergarteners name the letters, say the sounds, or write the letters that they choose. You can also be intentional about which letters you want your little learners to practice and separate the cards accordingly.

Emmett and I flipped all of the cards face down onto the table and took turns turning them over, one at a time. On our turn, we said the name of the letter, the sound the letter makes and wrote the letter (both uppercase and lowercase) on the recording sheet. He worked really hard on this and took great care in his letter formation.

All of these fun, engaging fruit and vegetable activities for preschool and kindergarten are available in my shop. Click the button below to check them out!!

Fruit and vegetable activities for preschool and kindergarten

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