Shoot the Letters into the Goal {101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet}

The next installment in my 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet Series is an activity that appeals to kids’ appreciation for a good challenge. It also appeals to their love for shooting things at a target.

This activity is called Shoot the Letters into the Goal. For this activity, kids build their own goal and then try to “shoot” their letters into the goal. How much fun is that?!?!  🙂

We started by building our own goal using wooden blocks from our Spielgaben set. But you can use any material you have on hand to create your goal. It can be big or small. The objective is not necessarily to make it hard (or easy) for kids to score a goal; the objective is to make it fun and enticing for them to play.

The letters we used to shoot into the goal were printed on the top of milk caps. I washed and saved our milk caps, and then wrote letters on them using a permanent marker. Milk cap letters work well because they slide easily on a flat surface like our hardwood floor.

To play, I had XGirl set herself up a few feet from the goal. I instructed her to draw a letter from the bowl and say it’s sound.

Once she identified the letter sound, she was free to try “shooting” it into the goal.

She continued playing until she had used all the letters up. On this particular round she didn’t “score” very many goals. But that just provided her with incentive to build a slightly bigger goal so she could play again!

More ways to teach to the alphabet

More alphabet posts from Gift of Curiosity:

• Letter hunt sensory bin
• Making letters with straws and play dough
• Spaghetti letters
• Letter puzzles
• Making “alphabet soup”
• 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.