Kids love farm animals! Once springtime comes around, a great way to spice up letter recognition lesson plans is with hands-on farm activities for preschoolers. When teaching young children letters, repetition is key. This Free Printable Farm Theme Preschool Spin & Stamp Alphabet Activity is an awesome repetitive activity that will help your preschooler learn to tell the difference between lowercase and uppercase letters.
An added bonus of this farm idea for a preschool theme is that spinning the plastic spinner and pressing the stamps onto the paper are both excellent activities to strengthen fine motor skills.
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Learning Pre-Reading Skills in Preschool
HANDS-ON READING IN PRESCHOOL
LEARNING LETTER NAMES AND SOUNDS IS AN IMPORTANT FOUNDATION TO LAY BEFORE KIDS LEARN HOW TO READ.
Pre-reading skills are skills that children have that allow them to be successful at learning to read. Integrating farm learning activities for preschool will pique their interest while also teaching an important skill.
Teaching uppercase and lowercase letters doesn’t have to be rote memorization with flashcards! Check out this preschool farm activity-free-to get started with an interactive learning activity.
There are a few things you can work on with your preschooler to help build their pre-reading skills!
- Learning uppercase and lowercase letters
- Work on letter sounds
- Practice holding books and look at how the words are written
- Read and talk about the illustrations in books
- Make reading fun and help to instill a love of reading in your child
How Do I Teach Pre-Reading Skills to Preschoolers?
FUN LEARNING ACTIVITIES
TEACHING LETTERS AND SOUNDS SHOULD ALWAYS BE FUN FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILD! CREATE GAMES AND ACTIVITIES TO KEEP YOUNG KIDS ENGAGED.
While these preschool farm worksheets are specifically designed to teach children to recognize and name upper case vs. lowercase letters, there are a number of other activities that promote early reading success.
- The more books you read together, the better!
- Combine learning the letters of the alphabet with sensory play activities.
- Sing songs, read rhyming books, and point out rhymes.
- Look for letters while having free play time and during dramatic play activities.
- Play with words by stretching out the first sound or saying each sound individually to guess the word.
Why Is It Important For Kids To Learn Letters?
Letter identification of both uppercase and lowercase letters forms an important foundation for learning to read. Hands-on activities make it fun and interesting for young learners. Pair this with a farm sensory bin and before you know it, your kids will be ready for proper nouns.
Background Knowledge
When students understand letters of the alphabet and can name and match them, they have a lot of knowledge to draw from when they start learning letter sounds and basic decoding.
Alphabetic Principle
Learning letter names contributes to understanding the alphabetic principle: The idea that written language is made up of letters that correspond to sounds in spoken language.
Connect Letters to Words
Learning letter names helps children make important connections, like each letter stands for a particular sound and when we string them together it makes a word.
Increases Automaticity
The more activities and games children play while learning letter names/sounds helps them develop automaticity. The easier it is to recall and match letter names/sounds, the easier it will be to learn to read.
How to Make The Farm Theme Alphabet Spin & Stamp
To Prep:
To use the Farm Theme Spin & Stamp activity simply print and go! There is no prep work needed. You can print on regular paper.
To create a spinner, place a paper clip around the tip of the pencil as shown below. Or you can place a paper clip on a paper fastener and insert the fastener through the center of the spinner.
To Play:
Hold the pencil down and use a finger to flick the paperclip and it will spin. Then stamp the uppercase or lower case letter that was spun. We love these kid-sized alphabet stamps because they are super easy for the kids to hold and see what they are stamping.
The spinner will land on either the uppercase or lowercase letter printable. Your child will then pick the stamp for that letter and press it onto the paper.
Alphabet Books
You can also pair the free farm literacy activity for preschool with themed alphabet books for the perfect writing station! You can read the books with the kids or have them explore the books independently.
Use a Pencil
For students that are ready for capital letter tracing and writing, they can use a pencil/crayon/marker to practice writing the letters instead of stamping them.
Practice Sounds
Instead of just using the learning activity for letter recognition, you can ask children to identify the sound each letter makes, and name a few words that begin with that sound (/p/ pig)!