Cutting & pasting letters from magazines {101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet}

Sharing is caring - thank you for spreading the word!

Do you have a child who loves to cut and paste? A child who gets excited when the glue sticks come out? A child who is working on scissors skills? Do you have old magazines or catalogues laying around?

If you answered yes to any of the above, this may be a wonderful letter learning activity to try with your children.

The next installment in my 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet Series is cutting and pasting letters from magazines. This activity works on letter recognition while also developing fine motor skills. It’s also very adaptable to kids of different developmental levels.

Click here if you want more information about teaching the alphabet in a fun, hands-on, and multi-sensory way. 

A note about adapting this activity for your child’s learning needs

When I did this activity with my daughter, she was learning about the vowels. Therefore, I had her search for five different letters, a, e, i, o, and u.

If you are doing this with a younger child or one who is not very familiar with the letters yet, I strongly recommend having them search for just one or two letters at a time. Here are a few ideas for adapting this activity:

• Have your child search for the letters he or she is learning that week (if you do letter of the week)
• Have your child search just for uppercase versions of 1 or 2 letters
• Have your child search just for lowercase versions of 1 or 2 letters
• Have your child search for both uppercase and lowercase versions of 1 letter
• Have your child search for the letters in his or her name
• Have your child search for letters that are confusing him or her, like b and d or p and q
• Have your child search for every letter of the alphabet in alphabetical order (for more advanced learners only)

As you can see, this activity can be easily adapted to meet your child’s needs.

For this activity, you will need the following materials:

• Old magazines or catalogues (ones that your child can cut up)
• Kid-friendly scissors
• Glue stick
• Paper divided into sections with the letter to be pasted in each written at the top

Start by making sure your child understands what letters he or she is to search for in the magazine, and that he or she knows how to use the scissors to cut out letters. I showed XGirl how to cut out a big chunk of the page with the letter she wanted, and then to trim it down to just the letter. This made the cutting much easier for her.

XGirl then pasted her letters in the appropriate column.

She continued cutting and pasting until she had found letters for each column.

For us, this was a good way to review the vowels.

How will you use this activity to teach the alphabet? Leave a comment below to share your ideas.

Have questions about teaching the alphabet? We’ve got answers! Click here to learn more.

More ways to teach to the alphabet

More alphabet posts from Gift of Curiosity:

• Spaghetti letters
• Letter puzzles
• Montessori sandpaper letters
• 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.

Follow Katie @ Gift of Curiosity’s board Learning Letters on Pinterest.