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Home » All categories » Literacy Activities for Preschoolers: Beginning Sound Hats

Literacy Activities for Preschoolers: Beginning Sound Hats

March 18, 2015 •

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This week’s Playful Preschool Series  theme is hats.

This literacy activity is a fun way to play with hats and stuffed animals.  Best of all your preschoolers will be learning about beginning sounds!

Begining Sound Preschool Literacy Activity

Play this fun game with homemade hats to help build literacy skills with preschoolers.

Full Disclosure:  This post contains affiliate links.

Why We Chose This Language Activity

There are so many great books about hats.  Make sure to check out our list below. My boys love to read about hats, play with hats and make hats.

We are also working on letter sounds so we wanted to incorporate that into our play.

We had a hard time choosing just one hat literacy activity to share with you!

Setting Up and Playing

Materials Needed: paper bowls, markers and a variety of stuffed animals or dolls

1. Gather a collection of stuffed animals or dolls.  Six is a good number for this activity.

playing with stuffed animals

2. You will need a paper bowl for each animal that you have collected.  Turn your paper bowls upside down and decorate them with markers.

letter sound hats

 

3. On each hat you will write the letter that represents the beginning sound of each animal.  You can decide if you want to use the general name of the animals (ie dog, bear, tiger) or if your animal has a given name (ie our cow’s name is Moo-Bell) you can use that beginning sound/letter.  Include the kids in this step.  It’s a great language skill building activity!

It is time to play!  The goal is to match each letter hat to the correct stuffed toy.

literacy activities for preschoolers 1

 

Have your kids pick a hat and say the sound the letter represents.  For example, if they select the hat with “D” on it, they would say /d/.  Then ask, “Which animal starts with the sound /d/?”

They then put the hat on the correct animal.

Take the hats off and play again.

My kids ended up making multiple hats for each animal!

Here are some fun books to read aloud about hats that preschoolers love!
Caps for Sale by Slobodkina is a classic.  A peddler  with a tower of hats on his head falls asleep under a tree.  When he awakes, he discovers the monkeys have taken his hats.  How will he get them back?

I Want My Hat Back! by Klassen is a funny tale of a bear who asks all the animals he meets where his hat is. Who has his hat?  And, what will become of the hat holder?
Hooray for Hat by Won is another fun read.  Elephant is grumpy until he opens his door to discover a hat waiting for him.  He sets off to show Zebra his hat which sets a parade in motion.

Lots of preschool literacy fun!

RELATED POSTS

Hatching Beginning Sounds

Beginning Sound Pancakes

Beginning Sound Fossil Matching

Keep reading.  Visit the links below for more great hat ideas from the #playfulpreschool team!

Upper and Lower Case Hat Match by Rainy Day Mum

Quick and Easy AT Word Family Hat Activity by The Educators’ Spin On It

Fine-Motor Birthday Hat for Preschoolers by Life Over C’s

Preschool Hat Improv Game by Capri + 3

Guess The Hat? Sight Word and Colour Recognition by Learning 2 Walk

Hat Matching Printable Cards by Powerful Mothering

Did you get your free list of Books Kids Will Beg You to Read?

Get It

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Filed Under: All categories Tagged With: beginning sounds, playful preschool

About Jodie Rodriguez

Jodie Rodriguez is a mom of two young boys and an early childhood/elementary educator with over 20 years of experience. Jodie's passion is helping parents, teachers, librarians and anyone else interested in nurturing and reaching ALL of our youngest growing readers.

Comments

  1. Samantha @ Stir the Wonder says

    March 28, 2015 at 1:16 pm

    This is so creative! Thanks for linking up at the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop! We hope you join us again next week!

  2. susen @Dabbling Momma says

    March 21, 2015 at 9:07 pm

    fun, cute activity! Great way to involve stuffed animals into learning!

  3. Carrie Groneman says

    March 21, 2015 at 2:46 pm

    What a TERRIFIC learning activity! ‘Caps For Sale’ was always a favorite read and this is a perfect way to reinforce visually what is being read. Well done! Stopping by from Family Free For All. Carrie, A Mother’s Shadow

  4. Liz says

    March 18, 2015 at 5:04 pm

    I love this idea. So motivating for the kids. Thanks!

  5. Cerys says

    March 18, 2015 at 10:54 am

    What a fun activity – I’m going to give this a go with names of people in her preschool class tomorrow.

  6. Beth T says

    March 18, 2015 at 7:32 am

    I love this! Thanks Jodie, what a great and cute idea! I’m definitely going to use this in our homeschool balancing act. It will be a great way to keep my preschooler engaged and busy during her brother’s “school time.”

    • Jodie Rodriguez says

      March 18, 2015 at 7:50 am

      Beth, I’m so glad you will be able to use the idea. We had a lot of fun with it!

  7. Natasha says

    March 18, 2015 at 7:14 am

    This is a fun activity! We have hats for our animals to try this with.

    • Jodie Rodriguez says

      March 18, 2015 at 7:50 am

      I love when I have most of things already on hand to do an activity!

  8. Amanda says

    March 18, 2015 at 5:43 am

    I love this and wish we had bowls, I mean hats for our bears. Adding them to our grocery list because this is a must try activity!

    • Jodie Rodriguez says

      March 18, 2015 at 7:51 am

      Have your little one add them to the list Amanda!

Trackbacks

  1. Upper and Lower Case Letter Hat Match says:
    March 28, 2015 at 10:18 am

    […] Literacy Activities for Preschoolers: Beginning Sound Hats by Growing Book by Book […]

  2. Hat Matching Printable Cards says:
    March 18, 2015 at 8:17 am

    […] Literacy Activities for Preschoolers: Beginning Sound Hats by Growing Book by Book […]

  3. Fine-Motor Birthday Hat for Preschoolers says:
    March 18, 2015 at 8:12 am

    […] Literacy Activities for Preschoolers: Beginning Sound Hats by Growing Book by Book […]

  4. Guess The Hat? Sight Word Game and Colour Recognition says:
    March 18, 2015 at 6:53 am

    […] Literacy Activities for Preschoolers: Beginning Sound Hats by Growing Book by Book […]

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