This year, we have one child in the “Kindergarten” level. Can I just say, hooray for Homeschooling? I don’t know what I’d do if I had to send our sweet little one off to school this year! For homeschoolers, this can be such a precious time of learning together. It’s all those nostalgic ‘lessons’ – Letter sounds, the Alphabet, starting to read – it’s so exciting and fun to watch children work through these stages.
When I ran a business selling educational books, I spent some time at a Montessori school near our home. I saw a series of drawers with letters on them and starting peeking inside each drawer. I was awed by the little knick-knacks and treasures inside. Each drawer had a letter with the items inside the drawer corresponding with the letter (starting with that letter).
I thought it was such a great idea for use in introducing letter sounds that I decided to implement a version of those Letter Drawers in our homeschool. My version isn’t really as elaborate but it does the job very well and our children have really enjoyed looking into the drawers as they learn new letter sounds. I add to the drawers all the time as I find little objects here and there that fit our needs!
Here’s a peek inside some of the drawers:
When we introduce a new letter sound, the Letter Drawers are just part of what we incorporate into our lesson. We get the drawers, open the corresponding drawer, and the child tries to locate the items in the drawer that start with the right sound. We will also discuss what the other items start with and what sound it makes.
You could easily create a version with one drawer per letter, which would be wonderful! I chose to combine the drawers into groups because of space and also the ease of not having to collect quite as many items! This can be played with any way you feel inspired!
This is a really easy, fairly inexpensive way to have tactile fun with letter sounds!
Happy Homeschooling as you start the official ‘school year’.
Blessings!
Cassandra @ The Unplugged Family
your The Fool-Proof Playdough Recipe is missing the water, sorry there was no place to post there