Cotton in the Cups Letter Game {101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet}

In this week’s installment of my 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet Series I am sharing a game that lets kids throw things around inside the home – safely!  

I call this the Cotton in the Cups Letter Game. It is super simple to set up, provides kids with a fun and motivating physical challenge, and can be played in a number of different ways that all support letter knowledge.

All you need for this activity are some cups, a marker, and a handful of cotton balls.

At the time we did this, I was working on vowel sounds with my kids. They were both struggling to correctly identify the difference between the short ‘e’ and short ‘i’ sounds, in particular.

So I wrote each of the five vowels on the side of five different cups. I then laid the cups in a row on our hearth.

The kids took their seats right in front of the hearth, and I provided them with a bowl of cotton balls.

They took turns grabbing a cotton ball and trying to throw it into the cups.

At first we played like this: I said a letter sound, my kids had to identify which letter made the sound, and then they tried to toss the cotton ball into the cup with that letter on it. (Whether they made it in or not was irrelevant to the game, but they loved the challenge anyway.)

After a while, I mixed up the cups and turned them around so my kids couldn’t see the letters anymore. Then my kids tossed a cotton ball at the cups. If it landed in the cup, I showed them what letter was on the cup and they had to say the letter sound.

There are probably other variations on this game you could try as well. How would you use this game to promote learning?

More ways to teach to the alphabet

More alphabet posts from Gift of Curiosity:

• Road Letters
• Letter hunt sensory bin
• Erasing letters with a Q-tip
• Making letters with straws and play dough
• Making “alphabet soup”
• Smash the puffy letters
• Mini letter hunt with a magnifying glass
• Kinetic sand letters
• Letter hopscotch
• Crystallized letters
• Letter hop
• Yarn wrapped letters
• Letter tic-tac-toe
• Rainbow letters

You can find more ways to teach the alphabet on my Literacy Activities for Kids page and my Letter Learning Pinterest board.