When my daughter first started school she knew a lot of the alphabet already, but was having difficulty distinguishing between some uppercase and lowercase letters. To help her learn the last few letters I decided to make a DIY letter game that we could play at home.
I wanted to design a game that was hands on and also a fun way to learn letters, so she wouldn't lose interest. It was close to Easter and we had lots of foam carrots from the dollar store, so I made a carrot patch letter matching game. You can recreate it for your own kids or students by following the steps below.
In addition to letter recognition, the game also helps develop fine motor skills and hand/eye co-ordination. It's also completely portable so it can be taken to grandparents houses, appointments or used to entertain kids on a flight or car trip. The best part is the kids will have fun planting and harvesting the carrots which will keep their attention longer than a worksheet letter activity.
Supplies needed:
- Egg carton
- Black pen
- Brown paint
- Paint brush
- Foam carrots {small & large}
- Scissors or knife
We already had all the supplies needed to make this game at home, but if you don't you can easily find everything you need at a dollar store or craft supply store. If you're doing this as an activity in a classroom, or with children who may have an egg allergy, then I recommend buying unused empty egg cartons online or from a supply store. If there are no egg allergies you can recycle used egg cartons.
Foam carrots are usually easy to find in stores around Easter time, however if you aren't having any luck you can always find them on Amazon throughout the year. You can use foam hanging carrot decorations too, just cut off the loops.
HOW TO MAKE A DIY LETTER MATCHING CARROT PATCH GAME
For our egg carton I used the letters g, f, m, b, q and y because these were the letters my daughter was having the most trouble distinguishing between capital and lowercase versions. You can do this activity with any letters you like, choose the ones that your child needs help with. You could also paint more than one egg carton to do the whole alphabet.
1. Paint the egg carton with brown paint and set aside to dry. You may need to do 2 or 3 coats depending what colour egg carton you have and how thick your paint is.
2. Write capital letters on the large foam carrots.
3. Write lowercase letters onto the small foam carrots.
4. Write matching letters onto each egg space on the egg carton. Uppercase letters along the back and lowercase along the front.
5. With the end of scissors or knife poke a small hole in the top of each bump on the egg carton so the carrots will be able to slot in. Now your carrot patch is ready to be played with.
Once your carrot patch is finished get your child to match the letters to the right slot and once full they'll have a carrot patch of matching small and large letters. When they're done playing you can store the carrots inside the egg carton so they don't get lost.
Other ways to use the carrot patch game
- Instead of writing the letters directly onto the egg carton and carrots, use dot stickers with washable marker, so you can wipe off and change the letters or order of the letters without needing more carrots and another egg carton.
- Change to new letters once they've mastered the initial 6 letters. Focus on letters they're still having difficulty recognising.
- Instead of doing 6 capital and lowercase letters you can adapt the game to 12 individual letters. You can also write the lowercase letters onto the carrots and uppercase letters on the egg carton to make it trickier for children to match.
- Instead of using the game for letters, use shapes, colours, numbers or matching numerals to dots for one to one correspondence.
- Use the foam carrots in a simple Easter sensory bin with a base of green dyed rice, split peas or shredded paper so the kids can search and find the letters.
- Use the whole carrot patch in an Easter small world. There's lots of Easter small world ideas here.
MORE FUN EASTER LEARNING IDEAS
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