Teaching your children literacy can be a lot simpler (and much more fun) than it sounds. Sometimes, all it takes to get through to your kids is a creative, entertaining way to do it, and this Alphabet Bean Craft/Game is a perfect example. This activity is great for helping kids visualize the letters of the alphabet and interact with them in a hands-on way. Here’s how it works!

Materials:

You don’t need too much for this craft. Everything you need can be found in your own home, or in your local supermarket. The materials are…

• Dry butter beans
• Muffin liners
• Small alphabet stickers (small enough to fit on a bean)
• Muffin tray (optional)

(Note: If you don’t want to use stickers, or if you don’t have any available, you can use a sharpie marker instead)

Step 1 – The Muffin Liners

After you’ve assembled all your materials for this activity, the first step is to take your muffin liners and let your kids stick one letter of the alphabet at the bottom of each one. Do this 26 times until you have at least one muffin liner for every letter.

Step 2 – The Butter Beans

Next, take the rest of your stickers and put a letter on each bean until you have one bean for each letter of the alphabet as shown in the picture above.

Step 3 – Have Fun!

Now, let the games begin! Let your kids match each lettered bean with the accompanying muffin liner to get them familiar with their ABC’s. When they’re done with that, there are a host of other activities they can do with these beans and muffin liners as well. For example, you can call out a word and let your kids find the right beans to spell it out. Or, you can put several different letters in a muffin liner and challenge them to come up with as many different words as they can using only those letters.

Using nothing but beans, muffin liners and stickers, you can come up with dozens of different ways to teach your kids about letters, spelling, words, and phonetics—all of which are skills they’ll need their entire lives. What Alphabet Bean ideas can you come up with? Let us know on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using #mothergooseclub.

Our children are going to need to use letters for their entire lives, so what better way to get them familiar with letters than by making them into toys? This alphabet craft can be completed in just thirty minutes, and can be used to teach letters, spelling, and phonetics for years. Here’s what to do:

Materials

This craft requires very few materials. You may have everything you need in your house already, but if you don’t, they can be easily be found in most general stores. All you need is:

• Playdough
• Glue
• Bottle caps (at least 36)
• Magnets (optional)

Step One

Once you’ve gathered all the materials, start by shaping the Playdough into the different letters of the alphabet. Make sure each letter is small enough to fit within the circumference of the bottle caps. Your kids can do this on their own, but you can give them a hand if they need it.

Step Two

Next, glue each Playdough letter onto the flat side of each bottle cap. Make sure you don’t use too much glue to keep the mess to a minimum. You don’t have to, but if you have some magnets, you can glue them to the other side of the bottle caps. That way you can stick them to the fridge!

Finally, have fun! Encourage your kids to make as many different words as they can with their bottle cap letters. Or, say a word and let your kids try and spell it out. What other fun and educational activities can you think of with these letters? Share your ideas with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using #mothergooseclub.