ALPHABET SOUP GAME

It’s a tough job to learn your letters when you’re young!  But it’s an important job as they are everywhere!  There are hundreds of ways you can help your child to learn their letters, and this is my personal favorite!  The Alphabet Soup game and song is an activity I learned from another foreign teacher while I was in Japan, and I’ve been using it ever since!

We used some foam letters from a puzzle as this is what we had available.  Magnetic letters, or handwritten letters on pieces of paper would also work.  We chose 3 or 4 letters to start with to make it easier as Tristan was then a novice with his letters. We put these letters in a pot. We used the play pots, but you can use a real pot, or any other item.  In the past I have used bowls, or even a brown paper bag will work, just shake it up instead!

Stir up the letters with a spoon singing/chanting:

Alphabet soup, alphabet soup

Stir it up, mix it up

Alphabet soup.

  

Then ask your child to scoop out a random letter from the pot and identify it.  If they are too young, you say the letter and have them repeat it after you.  If they are a little more confident in their letter recognition, they can holler out the letter.  The louder they scream the letter has a direct correlation on how much fun they have and how well they remember the letters (only my own opinion, but you can it yourself).

You can also make the sound of the letter if you are teaching phonics.

Tristan then liked to serve up his letters for ‘lunch’. ‘M’ for Mommy, ‘T’ for Tristan, ‘D’ for Daddy, etc.

As your little one’s recognition of the letters increases you can add more letters to the pot to increase the difficulty of the game.

Another way to play the alphabet soup game is to ask for specific letters to be scooped out of the pot.

Another activity to help your child learn letters is to use blocks, and here is how our son learned to spell his name.

Another extension of this alphabet soup game is to make some alphabet soup of your own.  Unfortunately, I have yet to find alphabet pasta in any shops here, but I do know it is available in many regions.  Or look for some alphabet pasta in a tin.  This is a big deal for our kids to have pasta in a tin, but when there’s an educational element to lunch…sometimes you have to give in.

Have fun with this game!

Have a peek at our Learning about Letters page for more letter recognition fun.