Letter Matching Puzzles
Kids will love working on letter identification with these fun alphabet puzzles! They make a fun addition to preschool or kindergarten literacy centers.
What I’ve Learnt About Choosing Resources
When choosing alphabet resources, begin by looking at the pictures for letters like /i/, /g/, /u/ and /x/. The resources with short sounds are usually better for teaching kids to begin with e.g. igloo, grapes, umbrella and X-ray. I avoid resources that contain long or alternative sounds. Long sounds such as ice-cream and unicorn are great for teaching letter names, but I feel knowing the short sound is more valuable to begin with. As for giraffe and xylophone, yes they start with the letter, but the sound they make is different. For example, giraffe makes a /j/ sound and xylophone makes a /z/ sound, so this can be confusing to kids who are still mastering the basic letter sounds.
The following alphabet puzzles contain only the short sounds – yippee for teachers who find this a big plus like me!
Alphabet Puzzles
These puzzles help kids learn to match upper case and lower case letters. Each puzzle also has a picture which can be used to teach kids about the sound that the letter makes.
Preparation – Start by printing and laminating the puzzles for added durability. Then place the puzzles you’d like the kids to work on in a basket or spread them out on a table.
How to Play – Kids need to choose a puzzle piece and say the name of the letter. Next they need to find the matching puzzle piece. Once they’ve matched the upper case letter to the lower case letter, they can say the name of the picture and the beginning sound. For example, “This is the letter “A”, /a/ for apple.”
<<You can grab these puzzles by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.>>
More Fun Letter Activities
If you’re learning about the alphabet and beginning sounds, you may also love these Magnetic Letter Centers. They’re in both American and Australian spelling. You can check them out here.
More FREE Literacy Activities!
Be sure to check out the other free activities below. To grab them simply click on the links and hop between the different blogs to grab the freebies.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
Flower Garden Letter Match // Recipe for Teaching
Vowel Letter Graph //Sarah Chesworth
Letter Clip Cards // Live, Laugh & Love Kindergarten
Letter Hunt Recording Sheet // The Primary Post
Boom Cards(digital) Alphabetical Order Flowers // Teach me Mommy
Roll, Say and Cover // Teaching with Heart
Letter Search Sensory Bin Activity // M-is-for-Monster
Letter Matching Puzzles // Fairy Poppins
Unicorn Letter Identification Boom Cards // Literacy with the Littles
