This great activity came from one of our OT’s!
This activity involves sorting letters into 3 categories: Small, Tall and Fall.
It can help kids not only work on specific letter recognition but also:
- visual discrimination between different kinds of letters which can help to improve their handwriting legibility
- spatial awareness as they learn and recognize how to place letters accurately on the line (i.e under the dotted line, within the lines, going below the line)
- fine motor because the laminated letters are small so they get to work on pincer grasp and manipulating small pieces with their hands
For kids that have challenges with working with small pieces you can enlarge everything or use letters made from different materials such as the foam sticky letters so that kids can still work on the activity but its graded for their abilities with fine motor.
Overall this task provides another option for working on letter recognition and allows a hands on approach to teaching letter placement to improve handwriting legibility. It will also eliminate some of the motor component (actually writing the letters) than can cause some kids frustration while they are learning so that they can focus on letter placement and sorting letters.
What other ways do you use to work on letter recognition, sorting and placement?
