Activity Duration: 45 minutes – 1 hour

Age appropriate: 3 – 5 years old

Introduction:
Your child will learn the following skills: observing, listening, playing, exploring, questioning, experimenting, and stimulating most of his/her senses (i.e. touch, taste, smell, vision and hearing).

Purpose:

• Create a fun way of learning alphabets, names, or words
• A sense of surprise and discovery is incorporated in this activity
• Parent and child bonding session
• Improves fine motor skills
• Creativity
• Imagination

Materials Needed:

• Drawing paper
• Sequins
• White crayon
• White craft glue
• Colour pencils or crayons
• Water colour
• Paint brush
• Craft foam letters

Step 1: Parent’s task – Preparation of resource

• Decide on the topic, word, or letters in which you want to introduce to your child
• Using the white crayon, draw or write down the objects related to the topic, words, or letters

Step 2: Getting your child involved – Recognising child’s name

• Allow your child to use water colour paint and brush to paint over the drawing paper
• As he/she paints, it will slowly reveal what you have prepared for him/her
• To re-enforce your child’s learning, provide craft foam letters to the child so that he/she can identify the words/letters/name and use the foam letters to decorate the drawing paper

A different variation – Teaching a specific letter to a child

Step 1: Parent’s task – Preparation of resource

• Decide on the letter in which you want to introduce to the child
• On a drawing paper, draw out the outline of the letter
• Determine which words or letters are to be hidden from the child, and use the white crayon to draw or write on the drawing paper

Step 2: Getting your child involved – Recognising a specific letter

• Start the activity with a simple craft of pasting
• The child will use craft item/items related to fill the space in the letter
• This enhances both hand and eye coordination
• For example, I choose the letter F, thus flower sequins were used for this craft activity

Step 3: Relating the letter with daily objects

•  It is important to relate what you are teaching for this incidence the letter F with daily objects, so that the child could see a relationship to what he/she is learning. (e.g. is for Five, Four, Fish, Flower and Frog)
• Allow your child to use water colour paint and brush to paint over the drawing paper
• As he/she paints, it will slowly reveal what you have prepared for him/her
• After the child has finished painting the drawing paper, recap with your child on the day’s topic by having a causal conversation about the letter and the daily surroundings

By Poppletots.

This article was first published in The New Age Parents e-magazine.

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