Kindergarten Preschool
Language ArtsPrintables
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Kids love hands-on learning activities. Especially when they involve play dough! This printable is a multifaceted educational activity. The alphabet playdough mats provide an opportunity to work on letter recognition while strengthening fine motor skills in multiple fashions.
Alphabet Letter Recognition
Preschoolers typically know the ABC song and love the repetitive nature of learning the alphabet. They have a need to explore the letters, learn the phonics, and spell everything.
During this activity, younger children will focus on enhancing their recognition of each letter as they go through the various mats. Each mat also has a word written below the picture giving the child a chance to see what the picture is showing.
This activity also presents a fantastic opportunity to introduce and talk about beginning sounds. Sometimes words can be intimidating for young kids, so getting them comfortable with the phonics is beneficial for their early reading skills.
Using the Alphabet Beginning Sound Playdough Mats
These creative alphabet playdough mats are a fun, versatile educational activity that is sure to impress preschoolers of all ages. They’re easy to prepare, simply laminate the mats for durability and cut them out.
There is a total of 26 mats included, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each letter mat features a traceable word that begins with the letter (“A is for acorn”) and has a cute picture for kids to use as a template to create with their own playdough. If you’re looking for playdough mats that work on creating the letter itself, these uppercase alphabet playdough mats are the perfect place to start!
For younger preschoolers, they may be content with recognizing the letter, saying it aloud, seeing the word, and then going to town with the playdough to create their masterpiece picture.
Some of the younger kiddos and especially older preschoolers may be interested in reading the word by sounding it out or they may even know the words already.
One idea is to cover the picture so they can work on reading versus simply seeing the picture.
For children that are interested, they can take a dry erase marker and trace the word. If they are not interested or resist, let them work on making their playdough creations and try the tracing part another time.
This activity can definitely be brought out many times and adapted to their level of readiness.
Alphabet Fine Motor Skills Exercise
Let the readiness level of the children decide how to move through this printable. Even if they are not ready to work on their pincer skills (pencil grip), working with playdough is an excellent fine motor skills exercise.
Their hands will squish, roll, and craft the playdough to fit the template on each of the alphabet playdough mats.
Depending on the children, you may want to break this activity into sessions to be done throughout the week. If you are teaching multiple children, another idea is to give the children different sets of mats, for example, one child gets A-D, and another has E-H or whatever works for you.
No matter how you divvy them up, the kiddos will love exploring the alphabet with their hands.
