Letter Building with Marshmallows: Hands-On Alphabet Learning

Your child is almost completely through the alphabet! This activity helps your child recognize and construct the letters of the alphabet that have straight lines. Feel free to include Y and Z if your child is familiar with those as well.

Materials:

• Toothpicks
• Mini marshmallows
• Letter flashcards
• Optional: graham crackers and chocolate for smores after the learning activity
• Optional: mini-pretzels or pretzel wheels for curved lines
• Separate all of the letter cards for the letters composed of straight lines only.

Using the toothpicks and marshmallows for joints, show your child how to “build” a letter A. Prompt your child to try building a letter E, providing assistance as needed (and supervision for the pointy toothpicks). As you go through the cards, ask your child to name the letter and the sound it makes.

Once you’ve exhausted the letter cards, try some 2D and 3D shapes: squares, rectangles, pentagons, pyramids, and cubes. Your child may also enjoy trying to create abstract designs and sculptures.

This activity works on your child’s tripod grasp, precision, hand-eye coordination, and other fine motor skills.

Optional: when you’re finished, you can snack on the marshmallows or use them to create smores by microwaving them for a few seconds.

Teaching moments:

• Constructing letter shapes in this way allows your child to think deeply about how the letters are formed and internalize this for writing later. Kinesthetic learners, who benefit from hands-on activities, will especially benefit.
• If you would like to try adding curved lines, you could break mini-pretzels or pretzel wheels to create the necessary shapes.