How To Use Hands On Activities To Teach Letters And Numbers – Be Creative

Thank you for coming back to Azy Reading Journey website, where our goal is to make learning fun. I hope you are doing what you can to stay safe during this challenging time.

Well, we are now using some hands on activities to teach letters and numbers, and Azy is having a great time using his toy cars to locate a letter or number.

In the last post, I said we were working on numbers 1 to 14, and Azy was doing much better with counting, learning numbers and lower-case letters. I also said that we were using more of his toys to do counting activities. We are also thinking that it might be time to increase the activities and add new ones.

In addition to increasing the activities and adding new ones, I said that we were also thinking of doing more hands-on activities.

This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.

They will help reinforce what we have been teaching Azy and test his knowledge to determine how well he is retaining what he has been learning. You can read more about that here.

The hands on activities, will help Azy to continue learning the same lessons in different ways.

He will still be learning letters, numbers, shapes, colors, counting and other fun stuff, but in ways that we have not used before.

The foam letters and numbers have not been used for a while, but Azy took them out and is using them again. We will see how we can use them in the hands on activities.

Poster Board And Foam Blocks Activities

We went to Dollar store, bought some items, and have been working on some new activities to start using with Azy.

We did not get most of items that we planned to purchase, because now is not the time to be out shopping. However, we will work with what we have.

Azy’s auntie Rochelle made a beautiful poster board that is full of colors. Currently it has shapes, colors, numbers and upper-case letters. We will continue to add other things including more shapes, lower-case letters and other fun stuff.

Since Azy loves to play with his toy cars. His aunt thought that we could start off with rolling a block and let him drive to a destination.

So, we wrote upper-case letters on the blocks and ask Azy to roll one. After he rolled the block, uses the car to find the letter.

When he locates the letter, he identifies the letter, letter sound, letter color, and say what the letter is for (such as A is for apple).

I am happy to say that he welcomed that activity and is having fun driving to find the letter. Buy Your Crafting Supplies Now at The Dollar Tree!

Watch the video below to see Azy having fun using the car to find a letter.

== >Go to our Facebook page if you would like to see more videos with Azy having fun learning < == 

One Board – Multiple Activities

As we continue to work on hands on activities, we plan to add magnetic letters and numbers when we are using the poster board. We love to use magnetic letters and numbers, because there are so many fun ways to use them.

We will put letters, numbers, shapes and colors in a container. Azy and another person will be pulling an item (such as a letter) out of the container and placing it on the matching item on the board.

For example, when the person who will be doing the activities with Azy pulls a letter from the container, they will pretend like they cannot find it on the board.

So, Azy will be asked to help them find the letter on the board. Looking forward to see how he will react this particular activity.

It will be interesting to see if Azy is ready to start teaching someone else, and it will definitely show us how much he has learned.

If he responds well to this activity, maybe it will be a good time to start working on the other poster board that we are thinking about.

At this time, we are using two cubes with letters, but we will be getting more. Letters and numbers will be written on the cubes, and later on we will put words, color and shapes on them.

Flashcards are also being considered, so we will see how we can add them to the activities. We also want to continue doing activities that allows Azy to use the dinosaurs and farm animals.

Same Toys – New Activities

The Mega Bloks are still used daily, so we are planning to use them in a new way. We have started to label them, and so far, we have written letters numbers and words on some. It is a good thing that we can easily erase what is already written and write something else.

The words on the bloks are easy words such as, the color of the blok. Example, the word green on a green blok and the word red, on a red blok. The blok with the letter “A” has both the upper and lower-case. We will introduce the words as we go along.

Even though we are thinking about and planning these hands on activities, we do not have any intention to do all of them at once. However, as always, we want to have more than one activity, so if one is not working as we thought it would, we can easily switch to another.

The goal is to use activities that will help Azy continue learning in a fun way. He is having fun now, and we do not want to do anything to discourage him, but we want to introduce him to a new way of learning.

There are many fun activities that can be used to teach letter and number recognition, so we are hoping that Azy will enjoy a new activity when we introduce it.

He has been using the First Words Wooden Spelling Board to identify lower case letters, and that is not an activity that we do often because we are not doing a lot of words at this time.

When Azy uses the spelling board, we focus more on the letters than on the words.

Using Creative Ways To Increase Fun Learning

It is hard to say where we will go from here because introducing new activities should be done carefully. As I said in the previous post, based on how Azy is responding to what we are teaching him, we think that is it time to start working on something new.

It was encouraging to see how Azy responded to the activities with the poster board. It confirmed what we were thinking.

Therefore, while we do not have any intention to move too fast, we do not want to slow down either and allow Azy to become uninterested.

In thinking about and looking for creative ways and new activities.  I have pinned some on my Learning Numbers and Lower-Case Letters Pinterest Board, and I am planning to try some.

== >Go here to check out some of the fun activities on the Pinterest Board< ==

As always, thank you for taking the time to read about Azy’s reading journey.

I would love to hear from you. What do you think?

Leave a comment and let me know.

==>Go to our Facebook page if you would like to see more videos with Azy having fun learning <==

If you have any questions, please leave them. I will do my best to answer them.

If you like what you read, please like it and share it. Thanks