Printable Alphabet Games: Memory Letter Tiles

Summer time may be here, but many people will not be able to go on holiday this year. Our children need simple things to make them happy. Sometimes even a printer and a handful of markers will do. What is more a game that you will make and play with your children is even better. Take the time to make the following printable alphabet game with your child and play with them. It is easy, cheap to make, it is portable and above all educational. 

It is a classic Memory game. The ways that one can use the following printable are many. Here are a few ideas:

1. Memory

Print, colour and laminate the following photos.  Cut each of the letter tiles and place them in a box or bag, so as not to loose them. To play, place all the letter tiles face down. Ask your child to pick one tile at the time and try to match the letters by remembering where they saw the matching letter. Since the tiles include both lower and upper case letters, you can also play around with that: ask the children to match only the lower case or the upper case letters. There are many variations to this one. For more ways to use the letter tiles read the first page of the printable. 

2. Learning Centre

This printable can also be used as a learning centre. It is ideal for homeschooling and classroom purposes. Print, colour and laminate as instructed above, place the letter tiles in a box. Use plastic cups or bowls and use the tiles as alphabet manipulatives. Ask the children to short them, by placing all the A's together, all the B's together and so on.

Variations:

a. Ask them to find the letters to spell their name as many times as possible.

b. Write down a few words, like man, can, fan, and pan. Ask the children to find the letters and form the words you wrote.

c. Ask the children to find all the vowels or all the consonants. 

d. Ask the children to make complete alphabet chains.

e. Randomly pick a handful of tiles. Ask the children to organise the tiles alphabetically.

As you can see the possibilities are endless, so will be the joy of making a simple game and playing with your child. Give it a go!
If you have any ideas that you would like to see as a printable here, please let me know and I will do what I can. 

You might also like:

Printable Memory Game 

Alphabet Games: Printable Alphabet Loop Cards

Printable Memory Game

I have been asked to make a printable memory game a few times. Today I finally came around to it. 

Remember that I use these materials for my lessons and not for commercial purposes. Feel free to save and print the photographs to use at home. 

You might also like:

Printable Alphabet 
Memory Game

Bookworms: Brambly Hedge

Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem must be one of the most read children's books series in the whole world. I remember packing these books and taking them with me on every holiday we would go when I was a child. Back then I had only four of the books: The Winter Story, The Spring Story, Poppy's Babies and the Autumn Story. They are well worn out by now, but I still show them off proudly in my bookcase. So you can imagine how happy I was when I found a complete set of the series for 9.99 pounds in a stock book store. Unfortunately there aren't any book stores of this kind in Greece, with is something that annoys me greatly. Books shouldn't be overpriced. They should be affordable for all people to buy. Anyway, today I visited Jill Barklem's official site and thought I should share with you my love for these books. Check out the site with your child and have a look around. If I were you I would definitely buy them. 

 

The books were also made into a TV series back in the day. I prefer the books to the videos, but still have a look:

Printable Reader: What Is Blue?

Here is another Reader we used with my second grade this year. You can save and print the pictures to use with your child. This little book was made for personal use only. 

(c)  Christina Tsiagli

From Word to Sentence Level

I am supposed to be on holiday, however today I run into some photographs and scans I had made of my second grade notebooks and thought I should share them with you. On Vocabulary That Sticks I wrote about the way my students tried to internalise and retain new vocabulary. One of the most difficult things for beginner learners is to take that vocabulary and use it into meaningful sentences. As I have mentioned before our focus this year was not correct production but recognition of words and their function within sentences. 

My second grade students used their notebooks for this. To begin with we used the new words we learnt in funny sentences, that sometimes even made no sense. The point was for the children to get used to the sound of the word and locate it in relation to other, unknown words in a sentence. I loved the way they painstakingly wrote in the little notebooks, depicting what they wrote . Here are a few samples: 

We then moved form writing simple sentences to alphabetical order exercises and simple question formation. 

We also used our writing to help us improve our reading skills. It was really rewarding for them to be able to read something they wrote on their own.

When it comes to reading skills I think that simple emergent readers and picture books created by me or by the children on their own helped a lot. I created the What is Blue? reader exactly for this purpose. Here are a few sample of the picture class books we used this year. 

What Begins with A?
Click Here for a copy of this reader. 

The Days of the Week

Counting Fish

Our Classroom Rules!
Come Prepared to Learn.

Our Classroom Rules:
Keep your desk tidy.

Our Classroom Rules!
Raise Your Hand To Speak.

Our Classroom Rules!
Don't talk when someone else is talking. 

Our Colours!

What Is Blue?
Click Here for a printable copy of this reader.