Preview: Letter M Activities that would be perfect for preschool or kindergarten. Art, fine motor, literacy, sensory and alphabet practice all rolled into Letter M fun.
This week in our weekly alphabet study is the letter M activities. We had some handwriting practice, literacy fun, an art project, a fun new sensory bin, and a review of all the letters we've learned.
Check back each week for more alphabet fun!
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Letter M Picture Book
To start our study of the letter M and a week of fun activities, we read the book The Mitten by Jan Brett. We talked about how the word mitten starts with M. Then I showed my daughter what an M looked like in the book and we searched for other M's. I made sure to pick a book that matched the picture that we would create next for our alphabet art book. We also did some retelling with this book. One of my instagram friends (Jen from wonderful.day.inprek) had a super cute idea to use animals you have around the house and make a giant mitten out of white felt. Then little ones can practice retelling the story of which animal crawled into the mitten next. If you don't have little animals (we used some of our Safari Limited Toob Animals), you can go right to Jan Brett's website and she has printable animals and mittens to do the retelling of the story. You can find The Mitten retelling here on her website.
Letter M Alphabet Art Book
For the alphabet book we are working on, we added M is for Mitten. I pulled out these spikey rings that I have had since I taught second grade. We bought them (from Oriental Trading I believe) for kids to use as a different way to paint but never really used them. I figured it would be a different texture for her to paint with when paired with regular tempera paint. The alphabet book is part of my Alphabet Centers with Real Pictures.
Letter M Handwriting Practice
Letter M Identification
We practiced identifying the letter M in all different fonts with our M page from our Alphabet Centers pack. We kept out the spikey rings and paint and I let her paint over the letter M once she found it.
We also got out our roll paper and added the letter M to it. Then my daughter went through our bin of letter stickers to find all of the M's. She also found some of the other letters that we had already covered and added those to the correct place. She loves doing this and can do it without any help. I just write the letter on the top in silver sharpie and then give her the stack of alphabet stickers to dig through.
Letter M Sensory Bin
For some sensory fun, I made a bin that was all about magnets. We talked first about how magnet starts with M and that's why it was in our sensory bin. I started with dyed rice as the filler. This is so easy to make. I've used the vinegar recipe in the past, but I feel like the smell of vinegar lingers every time we get that rice out and it takes a long time to dry. For an easier method, dump the rice into a Ziploc bag with a few squirts of hand sanitizer and some food coloring (gel seems to be the most vibrant.) Then squish it up and spread it out on a cookie sheet to dry. It dries SO much faster than the other method that takes hours.
Once I had the rice in place, I threw in items from around the house that are magnetic and non magnetic. I literally just grabbed things I found around our house - magnetic alphabet letters, magnets, bobby pins, coins, plastic toys, foam shapes, fuzzy balls, corks. Then I grabbed our My Very First Magnets Set that we got for Christmas a few years ago. I gave each of my daughters (big sister was home from school this day) one of the large magnets and let them test the objects. Then they sorted them onto paper labeled magnetic and non magnetic.
Alphabet Review
To review the letters we've covered so far, we got out our sequencing cards from my alphabet centers. This is still a tricky concept for my daughter as far as figuring out what letter comes next. I started with letters we've already done and I only laid out a few choices for her so she wasn't overwhelmed by the entire alphabet. Instead of just looking for the one card that was missing on each of the sequencing cards, she decided to find each letter and cover it with the card. To help her out a little bit when we got to the blank spaces that she needed to fill in, I pulled out an ABC Chart (grab your FREE Alphabet Chart here.) She used that to follow along. The only problem was she was looking for the pictures versus the letters and the pictures on the sequencing cards are all animals so they did not always match the alphabet chart. Either way, it was good for her to practice this skill and struggle a bit.
Looking to practice the alphabet in your classroom or at home? You can find our Alphabet Centers with Real Pictures that are featured above in my TpT store.