I had a ball today with my daughter and her friends playing "Snowball Toss" and making letters.
"Snowball Toss" was a spur of the moment simple game. I had a Styrofoam container from an extremely large egg carton! I think I bought 5 dozen eggs from BJ's. Don't judge :)
I wrote all the uppercase letters of the alphabet in the divets. We got a few snowballs (pompoms) and I taped my laminated lowercase letter feet to the ground.
The girls threw the "snowballs" at the letters to find out which letter they splatted with their snowball. Once they found the letter, they identified the letter and the sound and hopped to the matching lowercase letter. Lots of movement and lots of fun!
After we finished hopping and throwing "snowballs", we discussed the different shapes of the letters. We got out foam popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners (Wikki sticks work better, but I couldn't find mine). We threw the "snowball" and found a letter. At that point, the girls had to decide if the letter was made of straight or curvy lines. They used the popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners to make the letters and then we sorted the letters into "straight" and "curvy" letters. Using the two different types of materials, to build the letters, really helped to visually separate the different types of letters.
The lowercase feet we used are from my preschool and kindergarten unit: "Put Your Best Foot Forward". If you can't tell, I LOVE active learning :)
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