This is such a fun way to teach your child the alphabet! It’s inexpensive, and it is thrilling!
All you need is recycled bottlecaps, glow-in-the-dark alphabet beads and a little glue! You can re-use these over and over, and you can play indoors or outdoors.
This activity is used at our CEFA Early Learning schools for our 2, 3 and 4 year old children (Junior Kindergarten One, Two and Three), so they have plenty of practice with alphabet letters at first, then start using the letters to build words.
If your child is not attending our schools (or if they are but like playing with this game) and you would like to try this game at home, make sure you supervise closely as the bottlecaps can be a choking hazard.
If you are playing with your child, use the phonetic sound of the letters to refer to them: ah, b, k, d) rather than their names. This will teach your child to read sooner. Once your child can read, you can use the letters’ names (ay, bee, see, dee). Have fun!
Best Ages for this Activity
Two to five
How to Make It
What you will need
- Glow-in-the-dark alphabet beads
- 26 bottlecaps (start saving them from your water bottles or milk bottles!)
- Super glue (to stick the letter beads to the inside of the bottlecaps) or regular glue
Optional:
Print our bottlecap alphabet (in color if possible) so once your child finds the caps, they can place them on each letter. Here is my free printable.
For that, you will need:
- Cardstock or plain white paper
- A colour printer
Let’s get Started
- First, prepare the material. Find a bead for each letter and glue it to the inside (or outside) of a bottlecap:
- If your don’t want to make bottlecaps (or if your child is younger) you can just use glow-in-the-dark letters that are a little larger. The tiny letters make it more challenging, but it’s up to you!
- Place all the bottlecaps (letter size up towards the light) under a light or simply in a well light room for several hours so they can absorb the sunlight.
- When your child has some time to play (but before you tell them), hide the letters in a dark room. You can make it as easy or as difficult as you like, depending on your child’s developmental level. For example, you can scatter them over the floor, or you can hide some under a bed, or on top of the bed, so it is more of a challenge.
- Invite your child to play a game called “find the alphabet” and go to the dark room – your child will be quite excited at this point!
- Call out each letter in order and see if your child can find it. Use the phonetic sound of the letters to refer to them: ah, b, k, d) rather than their names. This will teach your child to read sooner. Once your child can read, you can use the letters’ names (ay, bee, see, dee).
- If your child can’t find one letter, just skip it and go to the next one, for example, “let’s find sssssssss… – can’t find sssssss? Ok let’s try the next letter! Let’s find ttttttttttt… where are you tttttttt??” once you find all the letters, you can place them in order on top of the printed bottlecap alphabet sheet, or make a long alphabet train with all the bottlecaps!
Learning Opportunities
This activity will give your child literacy skills. They will learn how each letter looks and sounds, which prepares them for reading as well as writing. They will also use their fine motor skills as they manipulate the bottlecaps and place them carefully side by side. This is harder than it looks for a young child.
Extended Learning Opportunities
- Invite the child to place the letters in order from a to z on the floor.
- Find out which letters are in your child’s name
- See which letters are in your name, in their siblings’ names, etc.
- Use the glow in the dark bottlecaps to spell your child’s name (in the dark too!)
- Use the bottlecaps to write simple words like mom or dad or bib (you will need to make more bottlecaps, so you have more than one of each letter)
- Make two sets and match the letters – this your child can do on their own
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