At my preschool, we introduce a new letter each week and focus around that particular letter. In my class, I introduce the new letter with a “mystery bag”! I gather up different things that start with the letter and place it in a paper bag. During circle time, we sit in a circle and practice the new letter sound. At first, I always show the letter, upper and lower case and try to affiliate it with someone’s name in our class, or a friend in a different class, if I can! We then put on our detective glasses 🕵️♂️ and take turns each pulling out an item to find what’s inside! For me, there’s so much more to this than the letter sounds, yes, I’m exposing them to Phonemic Awareness, but we are also practicing taking turns, self control, listening while friends are thinking/speaking and then helping friends if they need it! It’s also a way to introduce items they may not know (i.e eggplant for letter E). We always talk about the items… where might you find it? What’s it used for? My hopes is that at least ONE item will stick for them to remember that letter. This has truly become a favorite part of the day.. my students absolutely love it!
I also read a letter book each week, I use My First Steps to Reading series by Jane Moncure. We connect what’s introduced in the book with some items we pulled out of the mystery bag! They get SO excited if their item was also in the book that week!
Teacher Friends- they sell Alphabet Sounds Teaching Tubs at Lakeshore for like $160! I’ve collected little things around my house (thanks girls 😬.. they actually OKed me taking an extra Elsa and Moana figure- it’s a miracle🙃) and thrift stores for little to nothing! I store them in a quart Ziploc bag in a container to pull from each week. I obviously use new or fresh filler items each week when I have them handy! Like that kiwi for letter K. It can also be modified for older grades— comparing sounds, adding beginning sounds (sh-, ch-, th-), ending sounds, etc.!
Review!
When there’s a week that we are not introducing a new letter, we review letters we have already learned. I try to base the items around the monthly theme. In December, all the items in our bag were Christmasy! I laid out the letter cards in the middle of their circle and we had to match the item to the correct letter. We made it a game that we had to work together to solve. One week in February, I put in pink, red, and purple magnetic letters to review.
Pumped for Preschool! 