Learning the ABCs is important for kids, as we know. Without having the basic letter identification skills, children will not be able to learn to read and write. Even though it is such a crucial skill to learn, that doesn’t mean it needs to be basic or boring for them. We can provide activities that are easy to set up, fun for the kids and will help them strengthen pivotal skills. This Popsicle Stick ABC Match Game is a fun way for toddler, preschool, pre k, and kindergarten age kids to practice matching alphabet letters!
ABC Match Game
As a mom, I LOVE the activities that are easy for me to set up for my kids. I don’t have hours upon hours to prepare learning activities for them. That means, activities such as this letter match fits into the category of my favorite. I had it all prepared within 10 minutes! TEN MINUTES!
The first thing I did was take the label off of the ziplock bag. You can use quart size or gallon size, we only had gallon so that is what I went with. Taking the label off, though, is super easy. Grab some rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball. That’s it. Alcohol will take it off in seconds.
Next, grab a sharpie or other permanent marker. Write all of the letters on the ziplock bag, also on the end of the popsicle sticks.
Which type of letters you write should be determined by the skills that your child needs to work on. For beginners, you could do both uppercase letters on both the bag and the popsicle sticks. If your child is ready to move onto lowercase, you could do that on both. If your child is ready for more of an advanced activity you could do lowercase on the popsicle sticks and uppercase on the bag. I put uppercase on the bag. For the popsicle stick, I did uppercase on one side and lowercase on the other. This makes it easy to mix it up for my kids.
Alphabet Matching Game
When the activity is all prepped, there are a few ways that you can play.
We started by putting the popsicle sticks into a pile and my daughter picked one. She would identify the letter on the popsicle stick, slide it into the opening of the bag and match it to the identical letter.
You could also put the popsicle sticks in a random order, laid flat on the table. Ask your child to pick up the popsicle sticks one by one, in alphabetical order, and match them. You can play however you would like, but those are a few ideas.
This can be taken on the road too or to a restaurant. Grab a paper or plastic cup to hold the popsicle sticks while they play.
ABC Printables
Looking for fun, free abc printables to make learning letters fun for toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners? Try these fun ideas:
- A to Z Printable Alphabet Hats – learn vocabulary, introduce beginning sounds, and more with this alphabet craft
- Printable Alphabet Bracelets – perfect for a letter of the week – just color, cut and tape your alphabet bracelet
- Alphabet Playdough Mats – strengthen fine motor skills while forming letters out of play doh
- Alphabet Mini Book Printable – low prep, fold and go alphabet book for each letter
- A to Z Letter Find – each alphabet letter has a different theme with recognition letter
- Alphabet Coloring Pages – wit over 200,000 downloads these are HUGELY popular ABC coloring sheets!
- FREE Letter Identification Worksheets – each of these super cute pages from A to Z has a different theme
