DIY See and Spell

I was skimming Activity Mom’s blog and came across this wonderful idea of pre-spelling activity. 

It’s basically a homemade version of Melissa and Doug’s See and Spell.  The best part of having to recreate this toy is that you can customize it for your little ones, plus... you can make as many cards as you can!

The first thing I did was to list down 3 letter words (other suggest that it should be a cvc words) and googled some pictures of it from the net.  I printed it on a piece of colored paper and traced the word on each card using our Melissa and Doug’s Magnetic Letters.

 

At first try he wasn’t interested on matching the letters on the spelling mats because he was more interested on the picture.  Then one time, I saw him reading his first word book and is attempting to read.  So I gave him this activity again and taught to read the word written on the mats by making the sound of each letter.

He loved it instantly! To teach him to read the word from left to right, I make him identify each letter from left to right as well.  Then he would have to look for that letter and match it on the spelling mat. 

 

Just a short note, my son has a sense of humor.  He loves to test me most of the time and as you can see he placed the letter C in cry in the letter R.  He knows that it’s incorrect but he just wanted me to say “no” so he can correct it.  He loves being corrected and doing the right thing afterwards.  He developed that behavior when we started playing his Alphabet Bingo game.  I guess, he finds it pretty boring to be correct all the time!

So I suggest you try this activity... but as always, you don’t need to push your kids. Expose them slowly.  If they don’t like it, then keep it for the meantime and try again later.