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Spaghetti Letters: Using cooked spaghetti, let your child make letters by bending, folding or tearing into pieces, try to spell out your family names! Best part, they get to eat the noodles when they are done! This is related to handwriting in the literacy continuum process in which children learn by doing and construct own meaning of knowledge. Socio constructivist theorists believed that children learn with others as texts are jointly constructed. Skills and strategies learned are then applied independently (Mackenzie, 2014, p10). Alphabet knowledge is the ability to name the letters of alphabet and recognize letter symbols in print (MOE, 2013, p8). Children should be provided with a variety of materials for them to manipulate and create fun learning! It is important to foster early writing skills as this is typically how writing develop in young children.

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As a homeschooling mama, I have been involved in teaching the alphabet to my kids since they were quite young. I realized early on that my daughter would learn best through a variety of modalities targeting multiple senses. So I set about to come up with as many fun, hands-on, and engaging ways to teach to the alphabet as I possibly could.

Starting today, I am launching a new weekly series that I am calling 101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet. In this series I will be sharing loads of ideas for helping kids to learn their letters. These are ideas that I have used with my own kids, and now I am passing them on to you.

Today's post is an activity called Spaghetti Letters.
Click here if you want more information about teaching the alphabet in a fun, hands-on, and multi-sensory way.
This activity is very easy to set up. I simply boiled some spaghetti, cooled it in cold water, and then placed it into a bowl for my kids. I recommend leaving a bit of water in the spaghetti bowl so it doesn't dry out and become sticky.

I set the bowl of spaghetti on a tray and then invited my kids to come have some fun.

My kids enjoyed the feel of the slippery spaghetti in their hands.

I encouraged them to practice making letters with the spaghetti noodles. I challenged them by naming letters for them to make, or saying a letter sound for them to make, or by saying a word and asking them to write the letter for the initial sound of the word.

When necessary, the kids used their fingers to cut the spaghetti noodles into smaller sizes.

My kids did enjoy making spaghetti letters, but their favorite part of this activity was getting to eat the noodles when we were done. 🙂
Have questions about teaching the alphabet? We've got answers! Click here to learn more.
More ways to teach to the alphabet

More alphabet posts from Gift of Curiosity:
You can find more ways to teach the alphabet on my Literacy Activities for Kids page and my Letter Learning Pinterest board.
Follow Katie @ Gift of Curiosity's board Learning Letters on Pinterest.

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Spaghetti letters {101 Ways to Teach the Alphabet}

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As a homeschooling mama, I have been involved in teaching the alphabet to my kids since they were quite young. I realized early on that my daughter would learn best through a variety of modalities targeting multiple senses. So I set about to come up with as many fun, hands-on, and engaging ways to teach to the alphabet as I possibly could.

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Oral language is a skill that is naturally acquired by children. This resource offers information to help parents identify what the child can do at each milestone in order to build a good foundation for language development and this relates to speaking in the literacy continuum process. Home is seen as a significant setting for children's language learning and learning development. According to Otto, it is an excellent language environment with more advantages than classroom setting (cited in Fellowes & Oakley, 2014, p72). A print-rich environment can help a child develop early language skills such as identifying words. The Australian Curriculum places strong focus on children's language development and students at foundation level are required to listen and respond orally to texts and communication with others (ACARA, 2015, p11).

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Eastern Ontario Health Unit/Bureau de santé de l’est de l’Ontario

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The potential of fun things to do outdoors is unending, the sky is the limit! This resource is an exciting nature hunt, where you will provide descriptive items for the child to search and this relates to understanding texts in the literacy continuum process. Children learn through interaction with environment and participate in their daily experiences. The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia stated that learning should largely take place in play-based, social settings and intentional teaching should be used alongside play-based learning (DET, 2009). Bruner highlighted the importance of social interaction and scaffolding (Fellowes & Oakley, 2014, p51) in which an adult can support the child's language acquisition by responding with a language model appropriate to his or her communicative objective.

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Looking for a fun way to encourage your kids to spend more time outdoors? Send them on a nature scavenger hunt! My kids happily head outside to hunt for treasure on a scavenger hunt and usually become so interested and engaged in what they are doing and what they've found or collected, that they will then stay outside for ages!

The nature scavenger hunt I am sharing today has a fun twist too - it encourages children to use each of their five senses to find the treasures on their hunt. There are so many things to see, smell, hear, touch and even taste outdoors (obviously, speak to your children about not actually tasting anything from the garden without checking with you). For teachers and homeschoolers, this makes the scavenger hunt a great addition to your learning about the five senses activities program.

So print a copy, grab a clipboard and a pencil and head outdoors for some treasure hunting fun! Take a basket if you wish to keep your treasures. You can even bring them back indoors for use to in a nature collage or try making leaf faces.
RELATED: 101 Things to Do Outdoors Printable
Printing Your Nature Scavenger Hunt

Click here to download: Nature Scavenger Hunt. Save the PDF to your computer. Open the PDF and print the page you require. When printing, select "Fit to printable area" (or similar) to ensure the page fits with your printer type and local paper size (these have been created at A4 size).

Be sure to also check out our great list of inspiring Nature Science Biographies for Kids.

Please note: All Childhood 101 printables are for personal use only, you may not use any part of this content for commercial purposes-that includes selling the document, giving it away to promote your business or website, or printing the file to sell. You may not share, loan or redistribute these documents. Teachers may use multiple copies for students in their own classroom.

Christie Burnett is an early childhood teacher, presenter, writer and the editor of Childhood 101. More importantly, she is a Mum who believes wholeheartedly in the value of children learning through play, the importance of quality early education, and the togetherness of family.

Read more of Christie's adventures at https://childhood101.com.

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Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable: Exploring Nature With the Five Senses

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Download this fun, free printable nature scavenger hunt to encourage your kids to get exploring outdoors - in your own backyard or further afield! The clues encourage kids to use each of the five senses to find specific items in nature.

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This resource offers information about prelinguistic skills and their impact on language development and it relates to speaking and listening in the literacy continuum process. Children’s learning is enhanced when they interact verbally, make suggestions, and ask questions. The child's ability to acquire knowledge can be influenced by both biological and environmental factors (Estes in Fellowes & Oakley, 2014, p135). Language is the key to communication and the Nurturing Early Learners Framework (MOE, 2013, p20) highlighted the importance for preschoolers to speak and convey meaning while communicating with others. Similarly, the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia included children as effective communicators as one of the key outcome and emphasized that children should be provided with opportunities to engage in meaningful communication (DET, 2009).

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For a child, a ten minute ride can sometimes feels like an eternity. By adding some unusual games to your travels can make the time fly by as fast as the miles. In this resource, you may find a game of alphabet license plate. Simply start with finding a license plate that begin with the letter A, challenge your child to find the next letter! You can move on to play with vehicle brands such as: Honda begins with Letter H. This is related to reading in the literacy continuum process, in which exposing children to "a range of multisensory activities help develop children's language skills" (Fellowes & Oakley 2014, p235). Phonological awareness (MOE, 2013, p9) is about understanding the sound structure of spoken language. To help children learn to read, they must first understand that spoken language consists of sounds that can be broken down into smaller parts.

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Planning to spend a few hours in the car? These (completely free!) road trip games will keep your kids entertained on long drives.

Road trips with your children don't have to be difficult ordeals punctuated with a repeated "Are we there yet?" To keep your entire crew entertained, try out some of these fun car games for kids.

1. The License Plate Game

Make a group effort to spot tags from all 50 states. Whoever calls out a state's license plate first gets a point. (Bonus points for the first person to spy a Canadian plate!) The family member with the most points at the end of the drive wins.

2. Trivia Questions

Before the car ride, prepare a list of trivia questions about your kids' specific interests, whether it's Disney characters or American history. Ask them throughout the drive to get their brain pumping!

3. Story Time

Get creative inventing a family fairy tale! The first person starts with "Once upon a time..." and offers a complete sentence, then the second person adds to the story with their own sentence. This continues with each person until the story reaches a conclusion. You can either set a time limit (15 minutes) or wrap it up after each person has a chance to say three sentences. Consider recording the story on your phone and having someone transcribe it afterward, so you'll always remember this quirky road trip car game!

4. Questions

There aren't many distractions in the car, so it's the perfect opportunity to bond with your children. Get them talking by asking some fun "get-to know-you" questions: What is the craziest thing you've ever eaten? What do you like daydreaming about? What are three things you want to do this summer? Find more ideas here.

5. The Alphabet Game

One person chooses the right-hand side of the road, and someone else the left. Each player looks for letters of the alphabet that appear on signs or license plates on their side. The object of the game is to point out all the letters of the alphabet in order, from A to Z. The first person to spot the entire alphabet wins!

6. The Animal Name Game

To start this road trip game, one person names an animal. Then each person in order has to name another animal (no repeating!) that starts with the last letter of the previous animal named-for example, elephant, tiger, raccoon, newt. There are no winners or losers in this game. With older children, try the game with TV shows, or geographical categories such as cities or countries.

7. Twenty Questions

One person secretly thinks of either a person, place, or thing. The other players then take turns asking yes-or-no questions, such as "Can it fly?" or "Does it grow in the ground?" After the players have asked 20 questions, each player gets a chance to make a guess.

8. Telephone

A child whispers a story to someone else in the car. That person whispers the same story-as close to a word-for-word recount as possible-to a third person, and so on. The last person to hear the story repeats it out loud so everyone can hear. Invariably, some of the story will have been lost in the translation, and the resulting garbled message usually inspires a good laugh.

9. The Theme Song Game

One person hums the tune to a favorite TV show, and everyone else tries to name the show as fast as possible. The first person to guess correctly hums the next song.

10. Name That Song

Here's another song-inspired car ride game. Take turns singing a lyric to a song. Everyone else in the car can guess the singer or title-bonus points if they get both! This travel game works best for older children and teens.

11. Scavenger Hunt

You'll need some advanced planning for this cool car game! Before the trip, make a list of items you're likely to see on the road-a blue billboard, cows, a motorcycle, etc. Your kids can be on the lookout for these items, keeping track of what they see. If they find everything on the scavenger hunt, they win a prize. (Perhaps some candy at the next rest stop?)

12. Memory Test

The first person says "A is for -," filling in the blank with any word beginning with the letter A, such as "apple." The second person comes up with a word for the letter B, such as "book," but must also repeat the "A" word: "A is for apple, B is for book." Continue through the alphabet, each person taking several turns and reciting more letters and words. By the time you reach the letter Z, that player will recite the whole alphabet and its corresponding words. However, if you're playing with younger kids, you may want to choose an earlier letter than "Z" to be the final one.

13. Secret Place Race

One person looks at a road map and finds a small town, village, river, etc. That person announces the name of the place they have chosen. A second player has 60 seconds to look at the map and try to find the secret place.

14. Restaurant Race

Each player chooses a restaurant, such as Burger King, Taco Bell, McDonalds, etc. Players earn points by spotting their restaurant off the road, on a billboard, on exit markers, on Food/Fuel signs, or by hearing it mentioned on the radio. Impose a time limit-say, 20 minutes-and then add up the points.

15. Healthy Competition

Though not exactly a "car" game, this activity is perfect for lengthy road trips. To offset the day's sedentary nature, have kids compete in athletic challenges at rest stops. See who can do the most sprints, push-ups, or jumping jacks in a minute.

16. Would You Rather?

Looking for silly travel games for kids? Start a round of "Would You Rather?" with everyone taking turns asking far-fetched questions to the family. For example, would you rather eat chocolate or pizza for an entire day? Would you rather have the ability to fly or become invisible?

17. Categories

Choose a broad category, such as cities, movie titles, boy/girl names, dinner foods, etc. Then have players take turns naming items within the chosen category in alphabetical order. For example, if you choose boy names, you could say Arnold, Bennett, Cameron, David, Ernie, etc. If a player doesn't state their answer within 10 seconds-or doesn't travel down the alphabet correctly-they automatically lose the game.

18. Word Association

This fun car game is perfect for word masters! The first player states a random word aloud. The next player quickly says another word associated with the first one. These steps repeat, cycling through all of the players. (Here's an example: mustard, hot dog, barbecue, Fourth of July, fireworks). The game ends if someone takes too long to answer, provides an answer without a clear association, or repeats a word.

19. Watch Your Mouth!

Before the road trip, choose words or phrases that are "off-limits" in the car-for example, the first names of family members or "are we there yet?" If someone says one of the off-limits words, they get a point. Whoever has the least amount of points at the end of the drive wins the game!

20. Counting Cows

This car game is surprisingly simple. Whenever you pass a cow, yell out "cow!" or "moo!" The first person to spot the cow gets a point (no repeats!), and whoever racks up the most points is declared the winner.

21. Roadtrip Riff-Off

The first player starts by singing a few lines of a song. Another person jumps in to connect the lyrics with another song (essentially, the last lyrics Player One sings should be the first lyrics Player Two sings). Here's an example: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you...." "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy..." "Happy birthday to you!"

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Planning to spend a few hours in the car? These (completely free!) road trip games will keep your kids entertained on long drives. Road trips with your children don't have to be difficult ordeals punctuated with a repeated "Are we there yet?" To keep your entire crew entertained, try out some of these fun car games for kids.