If you have a young pre-schooler or maybe a toddler, there’s a good chance that you have a curious child who wants to inspect everything, which can be both a good and a bad thing, and you want your child to have a positive experience from this.
With both of you being in the house, it can feel like there aren’t any opportunities to improve your young child’s skills, which can be a great way to introduce them to words and numbers.
This is where we present the clothes pin letter recognition activity, which is super easy to make and can be a fun way for your children to learn some new skills that they will find fun.
This article explains what this activity is, how to make one, and the potential benefits it can give your child.
Read on if you’d like your child to learn new and exciting things which you can make possible right now.
What Is A Clothes Pin Recognition Activity?
This activity comes in different forms where you can write letters on popsicle sticks, strips of paper, or even around the edge of a paper plate, and the great thing is that you can design them any way you want to appeal to your child.
Let’s say you want to focus on uppercase letters or vowels, or perhaps connectives if you want something more advanced and focus on longer words.
Then you can get some wooden clothes pins and either leave them blank or write letters on them if you want to focus on the alphabet or spelling words for that particular activity, and this can be any focus you think will be best for your child.
This form of learning is also great for you if you want some quiet time or have a task that needs your full attention, and you need to leave your child for a brief moment.
You’ll find that kindergartens might have something similar to these activities, and making something like this for your child can be a great way to get them interested in learning new letters and skills.
This can be tweaked for when your child becomes more competent with letters or when they move up in the schooling system.
How Do I Make It?
Suppose you want to make the paper plate version.
In that case, all you need are 26 clothes pins for the letters of the alphabet, a permanent or felt-tip marker, some letter stickers, and a paper plate, or if you’re making the paper strip version, you can get printable strips of prewritten letters online.
From there, you can print them out and cut them to the required size, and here you could use different colors of clothes pins to make it a bit more interesting.
For the paper plate version, you need to write each letter of the alphabet either on the outer or inner rim on the back of the plate, or you could use lettered stickers if you wanted to, as long as it’s clearly marked for this purpose.
Then you need to write each letter on a clothespin, again, making sure that it’s marked, and you now have a working clothespin letter recognition activity, and it takes very little time at all.
Note that if you’re using popsicle sticks for this activity, you don’t write the letters too small, and you can use each stick to concentrate on capital or lowercase letters, for example, so you know the purpose of each one.
How Does It Benefit My Child?
Once you’ve made it, you now want to introduce this activity to your child, and the best way to do this is by slowly easing them into the activity, and patience here is key as they might not be initially interested in the activity.
You can start by tracing each letter with your finger and pronouncing each letter, giving your child a chance to repeat and practice this pronunciation, and from here, you can begin encouraging your child to find each letter in the activity by using a clothes peg.
After a while, you can leave your child to clip away with this activity, and the goal may be to cover all the focus letters if you’re using popsicles for your letters.
During this time, your child can wiggle and snap the pins into place however they want, where they can start recognizing letters and words, which is a great way to teach your child fine motor skills.
This is a sure way to help your child make precise movements and complete specific tasks as effectively as possible, which is a great way to introduce them to learn these skills before they have started school, so it can be a gradual way of introducing them to these skills.
You can make the activity more complex as they learn the system or they begin schooling, where you can use this to help consolidate what they’ve learned.
You’ll find your child is going to be enthusiastic to show you what they learned, which can be a very rewarding experience for both of you as your child begins to learn new things, as this should be fun and engaging for them.
Are There Different Versions Of This Activity?
If you find these versions just don’t inspire you with confidence or seem a little boring, you can get creative by getting your child’s input by perhaps making it into a themed activity to make it more interesting to them.
One version of this involves any of those legos you have laying around, where you can draw out a letter and see if your child can replicate it using their lego pieces, which can make it fun if you go through several words.
Then you have versions where you can use play dough, and you could present your child with a letter, and they have to draw it into the dough, making this activity even more fun.
You can roll dice with letters on them to make it a bit more spontaneous and challenging, or use letter piece searches sensory bins, where your child has to fit the word, or piece, into the block, and can also help with their puzzle and problem-solving skills.
You could even write letters on a paper towel tube, and your child has to match the letter on the sticker with the corresponding one you wrote on the tube.
Remember that you want to make this activity engaging and fun, as your child can very well moan when given this activity, so have fun with it.
The Bottom Line
You want this activity to be an exciting side activity that can really help your child to recognize letters and spelling and put all of this knowledge into practice.
This can make for a great activity you can do together, and it can be an enjoyable activity that your child might come to realize.
There’s nothing better than sitting down after a long, stressful day with a good craft or hobby - right?
Hi, my name is Helena Forsite and I am a self-proclaimed crafter. I love everything to do with DIYs, baking, crafting, and more!
When I was younger, fresh out of college, I developed a pretty strong anxiety disorder. I found it difficult to go to work, socialize with friends, or even get out of the house at all.
