Spell Your Name Busy Bag
The other day I was looking through my daughter's puzzle/game storage bin to find something for her to do when I discovered some foam letters I had long ago bought at the dollar store and promptly forgotten about. Pooky has been naming her letters a lot lately, so I decided she might like to play with these foam ones.
My idea was to have her find and match up the letters that spell her name.
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We used foam letters similar to the ones shown here. At certain times of year, you can find foam or wooden letters at the dollar store.
Make sure you buy more than one set of the alphabet so you have multiples of the same letter.
To start this activity, I named the letters I wanted her to find one by one. As she found each letter, I traced it on white paper.
(I traced it with pencil first and then went over the penciled letters with marker.)
Once her name was traced on the paper, I gave it to her in a resealable bag with a handful of the foam letters.
Her task then was to search among the foam letters in the bag to find the letters she needed to spell her name and match the foam ones to the letters traced on the paper.
Once she matched up all the letters, I asked her to name them for me.
She also really wanted to color in the letters, which was fine with me.
It took only a matter of minutes to put this busy bag together and my daughter enjoys it immensely. We've "played" with it many times over the last week. I have spelled out each of her names as well as "Mommy" and "Daddy" on separate sheets of paper, and I keep them all inside the resealable bag so they're ready for her to play with whenever she wants.
Notes and Tips about the "Spell Your Name" Busy Bag:
If you don't already have letters, you can usually find foam or plastic letters at a dollar store. You may want to buy multiple sets to make sure you have more than one of each letter. Alternatively, you can print out letters on thick construction paper and cut them out to trace and play with.
For children who are just starting to learn their letters, be more discriminate about the ones you add to the busy bag. You may only want to put in the exact ones they will need for spelling their name. If you include extras in the bag, make sure you don't use letters that are too similar and might confuse your child. (For example, the letter "v" in this pack looks very similar to the letter "y", so I made sure to leave out the "v".
For children who are actually beginning to spell, you could use this activity to help them with sight words.
Now you have a fun and educational busy bag activity that is quick and easy to put together.
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