A Simple Game to Teach Your Active Toddler or Preschooler Early Literacy Skills

I love this game for helping toddlers and preschoolers learn early literacy skills they need for future reading development. It’s an excellent way for kids to get active and learn, and there are SO many ways you can play this game to build on your child’s literacy skills as they grow older.

 I’ve played this game many times with my kids, and what I love about it is that I can work on different skills with my son, who is just learning letter names, but change the game to fit the needs of my daughter, who is working on her letter sounds and beginning sounds in words. Sometimes they even play it together and help each other out! Seeing them working together and getting excited about learning melts my heart. 

And since my kids and I love this game so much, I wanted to share it with you so you and your kids can have as great of a time as we do playing and learning together! 

What Literacy Skills Does This Game Work On?

For most young children learning to read, learning that written letters and words have meaning is the first step to developing early reading skills. After that, learning to recognize letters and their names and sounds is the next step for developing readers. 

This simple game can teach kids the names of letters, how to recognize both uppercase and lowercase letters and the sounds of each letter. These are all important early literacy skills for learning to read. 

So play this fun game instead of drilling your child on their letters or letter sounds! You can learn while creating fun memories together. 

How to Play

The premise of the game is extremely simple. The complexity comes in the variations of the game. If you’ve ever played the game Seek-a-Boo with your toddler or preschooler, it’s very similar to that. 

You will need two sets of cards. One will be the calling cards, and the other will be the cards the kids have to search for. 

Place one set of cards on the ground and spread them out. (Sometimes, we like to hide them a little around the room to make it extra challenging.) Then hold up one of the calling cards and have your child look for the matching letter or picture on the ground. Once they find all the matching cards, they win! 

Variations

There are SO many ways you can play this game, and each variation can support a different step in your child’s learning. I will list the variations in the progression I used with my children to show you how I built on their skills to teach them new ones using different variations. 

Variation 1: Letter Name – Uppercase

Print off two sets of uppercase letter cards. Place one set on the floor, and use the other as the calling cards. 

As you show the calling card, say the letter’s name and have them search for the matching letter. 

As they start getting good at remembering the letter names, you can hide the calling cards and just call out the letter names instead of showing them a visual of the letter. This will help them use their memory to visualize the letter they are looking for instead being shown the letter. 

Variation 2: Letter Names – Lowercase

Once my kids got good at recognizing their uppercase letters, we started working on lowercase letters. I always start with capital letters first because they are easier for kids to visualize and see. Lowercase letters have a greater tendency to confuse young kids at first. 

Play this variation the same way you played with the uppercase letters. Let your child see the letters first on the calling cards before they search for them, and when they get the hang of it, just call out the letter name. 

Variation 3: Uppercase and Lowercase Letter Match

In this variation, you will need one set of uppercase and one set of lowercase letters. Spread out one set (it doesn’t matter which) on the floor while you use the other set as the calling cards. 

See if your child can match the uppercase letters with the corresponding lowercase letters. 

Variation 4: Letter Sound Match

Once your child can name and recognize all their lower and uppercase letters, it’s time to start working on letter sounds! 

Use the picture sound cards and the cards with both the upper and lowercase letters. To play this version of the game, spread out the letter cards on the ground and keep the picture cards as the calling cards. 

When calling out the cards, you can say something like, “What letter makes the /b/ sound like ‘balloon’? /b/, /b/, ‘balloon’. Then your child can search for the letter ‘Bb’ on the ground. 

Variation 5: Beginning Sounds

Once your child has had lots of practice finding the sounds of words, it should be pretty easy for them to move into the next step of beginning sounds. 

For this variation, place the picture cards on the ground and use the letter cards as the calling cards. When holding up a letter card, ask your child, “What picture makes the /b/ sound like ‘B’? And then they can look for the picture that starts with the /b/ sound. 

Other Game Options

• To set up the game, you can either print the letter and picture cards on cardstock or plain printer paper. If you’re feeling fancy, you can also glue them to small paper plates. (We used paper plates when we played because it was easier for the kids to pick up off the floor. However, they sometimes stuck together, so it didn’t always work the best. But they did stack and store really easy, which was nice!)

• We always played the game with the letter or picture cards facing up on the floor. This made it easier for the kids to find them when they started learning. However, you can also place the cards face down for an extra challenge! 

Have Fun Playing!

I hope you have so much fun playing this game with your kids! I’m a big believer in active learning, and this is a great resource to have when you are working on early literacy skills and also need to burn some energy!