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Educational resources for teachers to help bring the FUN back into learning.

15 FREE Letter Activities to Help Students Learn the Alphabet

If you’re like me, you’re always looking for free letter activities to help your class get more practice with the alphabet.  Learning the alphabet is essential, so it is important to make it engaging and fun for students. It takes weeks to go over the whole alphabet at the beginning of Kindergarten, so we don’t want to make it monotonous.
Here are 15 FREE letter activities ideas & a few other activities that your students may enjoy so they have a variety of ways to learn their letters. There are some affiliate links in this post.
15 FREE engaging letter activities to teach students the alphabet

Fine Motor Alphabet Activities

One way to practice the alphabet, yet get in some fine motor practice is to use toothpicks. Students will poke the letters with a toothpick and then hold it up to a light to see the letters glow.
Make sure to model this activity, so students know the toothpicks are ONLY used for the paper and not to poke themselves or a friend!
For some more fine motor and alphabet practice, you can use a pencil box, sand or salt, and a pencil. Students will pick a letter card and then write that letter in the salt.
Free Letter Activities - Alphabet Salt Writing
Shaving cream writing has to be one of the most fun and engaging ways to practice letters. Find some cheap shaving cream, squirt it onto the table, and then have students write the letter you tell them.
You can use this for name practice, sight words, etc. It does get messy, so be prepared with a lot of paper towels and extra time to clean up! 🙂 This is always one of the students favorite free letter activities!
Free Letter Activities - Shaving Cream Writing

Another way to incorporate some technology into learning, is with iPad games. I found this FREE alphabet tracing app called ABC tracer and can be found here. There are a few different games to play, but I chose the lowercase letter tracing.

The app shows you how to form the letter correctly. Then the students get to trace the letter on the right side. The green line follows the letter only if they use a continuous motion and stay on the dots provided. If they get sloppy or stop the flow of their writing, it will turn red.

I love that it really makes students focus on forming the letters correctly. They can also click on the picture at the bottom and it will say the name of the picture and then do an little animation.

The kids always get a kick out of doing “back writing”. Some teachers do sky writing where students write the letter in the air, but back writing is so much more fun! You can play it a few different ways.
First, students get in pairs. Then you can either tell them a letter and they can write it on their partner’s back. For added difficulty, have 1 student close their eyes and show them a letter card. Next, they write the letter on their friend’s back, and that kid has to guess what letter was written.

Stamping is another favorite activity. I use a stamping center for the whole year, and just simply change out the worksheets for the skill we’re working on (letters, sounds, cvc words, digraphs, blends etc). You can find this stamping bundle in my TPT store here.

You can also have students use the stamp without ink and worksheets and have them stamp in Playdoh instead. Of course they wouldn’t be able to match up letters, but they could spell words, their name, do abc order, etc. These stamps are great for little hands.

FREE Centers to Learn Letters

Rainbow writing is a colorful way to practice letters. You can give students a worksheet with the alphabet already on it, or they can make up their own. Students simply trace the letter over and over using a variety of colors.

Have you seen the new Kraft macaroni boxes with the alphabet and numbers? They are awesome and can be used in so many ways. I created 2 FREE Macaroni games to go with the ABC noodles.
In the Missing Macaroni game, students will fill in the missing letters. In the Macaroni Match game, students simply match up all the letters of the alphabet. Print these on colorful card stock for a pop of color to your centers. You can grab these FREE letter activities here.Free Letter Activities - Free Alphabet Center
Playdoh is yet another fun way to practicing the alphabet. Students can easily use the Playdoh to make letters on their tables or you could use the ABC flashcards from above for students to make their letter on.
I’ve created these Alphabet Writing Cards where students can use Playdoh, dry erase markers, or use a race car to “drive” around the letter. Playdoh packI love this of 36 for under $25!
I found a frog fly swatter at The Dollar Tree and knew it would make a fun game. If you can’t find one, I have included a frog image you can just attach to a flyswatter.
One way to play this is to simply tell the student a letter to find, and they can use the flyswatter to “jump” onto the letter. You could also have students pick the lowercase letter cardand then jump onto the uppercase letter. Grab this for FREE!
These Bingo Dauber ABC pages from the DLTK website are so much fun! Even better, they are FREE!!! You can find them here. Have students say the letter name as they fill in the dots on the letters. When they fill in the dots on the picture, they can say the letter sound each time.
Everyone needs a simple set of flashcards, so I have made these FREE! You can find these uppercase and lowercase alphabet flashcards in my FREE resource library.
The vowels are in red and the consonants are all black. I like to use these cards to make a simple memory game where students match up the uppercase and lowercase letters. However, there are SO many ways you can use ABC cards.
Free Letter Activities - Alphabet Cards Freebie

More Ways to Practice Letters

Another way to practice writing letters is to use Dr. Jean’s song “Letter Tales”.  Dr. Jean has fantastic songs for learning and they are fun! You can find the “Letter Tales” song on her Just For Fun CD here (scroll almost to the bottom).
This song is great because it sings about the letter and the sound, but sings it slow enough so students have time to write down the letters before it’s time for the next letter. 
Magnetic letters are fun to use on cookie sheets, but why not throw them into a bucket of water? Students can use a shovel to hunt for letters and then name the letter they find.

You could also have students write down the letter they found on a wipe off board. If you have a sensory bin, you can throw magnetic letters into water and play this game, or use sand.

You can also find so many pre-made games that are easy to throw in centers and take no time to prepare! Of course they aren’t free, but they are fun!
This Pop for Letters game is always a hit with kids. They draw the letter, say the name of the letter, and get to keep the card if they are correct. If they draw the “pop” card, they lose all of their cards. You can find this Pop Letters game from Learning Resources on Amazon.

These pre-made games from Lakeshore Learning are awesome and so easy to just throw in a center. You can find this alphabet matching game here, but they have many other alphabet games too!

I’ve also created a hands-on bundle of engaging alphabet activities that you can use in centers or with some of your RTI students. I like creating an alphabet book for each student, so they can practice the letters as we learn them. You can find the bundle here.
examples of 5 alphabet activities
If you follow me already, you know all about Fluency & Fitness® and how it’s an absolute favorite activity for teachers and students! Even administrators love it because it incorporates technology, movements, and learning!
With this alphabet version, students will be able to get up and move to get the wiggles out, while practicing their uppercase letter, lowercase letters, or a mixture of both! If you don’t know what Fluency & Fitness® is, you can learn more on our website.

fluency and fitness brain breaks to learn the alphabetI hope you’ll be able to use many these ideas to help your student master the alphabet using this free letter activities. Enjoy all the FREEBIES!

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