Life-Size Alphabet Board Game {101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet}

If your kids love to move and bounce around as much as mine do, this activity will give them plenty of opportunity to do just that while also helping them to learn their letters.

In this week’s installment of my 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet Series, I am sharing an activity that involves making a life-size alphabet board game to teach kids their letters.

This activity is flexible and can be done indoors or outdoors using whatever materials you have on hand.

Lately, my kids have been working on learning the letter sounds as they are taught in the All About Spelling curriculum we use. I set up this life-sized alphabet board game to give them additional practice with the letter sounds.

(All About Spelling teaches a much more comprehensive list of alphabet sounds compared to what my kids learned when they were in preschool and kindergarten, but you can use this activity to teach letter sounds for kids at any level of learning.)

I set up a giant “game board” in our homeschool room by writing letters on sticky notes and setting them in a circle on the floor. You can use whatever letters your child is working on. You can even repeat the same letter multiple times on the game board for extra repetition.

Don’t have sticky notes? Write the letters on paper plates or sheets of paper.

Doing this activity outside? Use sidewalk chalk to the write letters on concrete.

To go along with our giant game board, I also made a giant dice using our differentiated instruction cubes. I decided to just use the numbers 1, 2, and 3 so it would take longer for my kids to get around the board. But you can use numbers 1 through 6 if you prefer.

Don’t have a differentiated instruction cube? Create a dice from a square box. Or use a small dice from any board game. Or simply put cards labeled with the numbers in a bag and have your child select a number from the bag. 

I let the kids pick any letter to start. They both picked letters in their names.

They took turns rolling the dice and moving forward the indicated number of letters. As they stepped on each letter, I had them say the sounds made by the letter.

We decided that the game would continue until someone made it back to their original letter, without going past it. As such, the kids got to go around the board game a few times before the game actually ended.

As I was cleaning up the letters after our game, my daughter told me, “Mom, you should save those letters so we can play again tomorrow.” Knowing she enjoyed the game enough to want to play again was pure music to my ears!

More ways to teach to the alphabet

More alphabet posts from Gift of Curiosity:

• Crystallized letters
• Letter hunt sensory bin
• Erasing letters with a Q-tip
• Making letters with straws and play dough
• I spy letter hunt
• Spaghetti letters
• Letter puzzles
• Montessori sandpaper letters
• Letter creatures
• Smash the puffy letters
• Mini letter hunt with a magnifying glass

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