Preschool Kindergarten
Language ArtsPrintables
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A few weeks ago, we shared a fall-inspired activity that uses different fonts to help your little learners practice their letter recognition skills and today, we’re continuing that theme.
As your child learns to read, they’ll encounter a number of different fonts in books, magazines, newspapers, and even within the online space.
They’ll need to understand that the letter A is still a letter A, regardless of the type of font that is used and that letters like Q can look very different depending on whether they’re in print or in cursive.
This fishy letter sorting activity is the perfect way to start practicing as it makes a fantastic literacy center for both preschoolers and kindergartners and allows your child to work on letter recognition, sorting, and so much more.
Gone are the days of simply teaching print and cursive. Kids these days will encounter a number of different fonts on a daily basis and having the ability to decipher these fonts and recognize the letters that they already know will only assist them in learning to read in the future.
Fishy Letter Sorting
Like our fall leaf letter matching activity that we shared a few weeks ago, this letter sorting activity also includes all 26 uppercase letters of the alphabet.
Within the download itself, you’ll find a single printable aquarium mat and a number of goldfish.
Just print the mat off, cut it out, and run it through your laminator. This will make it easier to use with a dry erase marker and an eraser while adding a little bit of durability for when you’re using the activity with small hands.
The goldfish are broken up into sets of four, meaning that each letter of the alphabet is included within the download four times with four different fonts, ensuring that your little learner has plenty of chances to practice.
To use the fishy letter sorting activity, print, cut, and laminate your goldfish and when all of your pieces are ready, set them out for your child and explain that they’ll be looking for fish with the same letters.
Make sure you let them know that those letters won’t always look exactly the same.
Decide on a letter to start with and use your dry erase marker to write the uppercase version of that letter on the rock that you’ll find in the aquarium and then, have your child sort through the goldfish to find the letters that match the one you’ve written.
Let them know ahead of time that there will be four fish that will match each of the letters and that it’s their job to find the fish that fit into that aquarium.
If this is the first time they’ve looked at different fonts or you feel that they’re just not quite ready to handle the entire alphabet all at one time, start out with just a few letters. You can always add more as they master the few you started with and become more proficient in deciphering the various fonts.
