Hidden Words

Using a few resources to work on letter recognition and sounding out three letter words when my son was a little over 2 years old.

The set up.

What you need:

- two muffin tins (one with six slots the right way up and one with twelve slots upside down)

- magnetic letters (Toys R Us)

- six toilet rolls

- support list of three letter words (for example bat, car, cat, dog)

The activity:

In three of the muffin tin slots I placed letters that made up a three letter word. I then covered all six of the slots with toilet rolls. My son had to search to find which three rolls had the letters inside. Then we looked at the word prompt list to see if we could match the letters to make a word. We stuck the word across three of the slots on the upside down muffin tin. I would then refill the six-slot tin with three new letters and we would repeat the process. To make the activity more challenging you could choose not to use a word prompt sheet to encourage your child to form their own three letter words.

Searching for letters.

The end words arranged on the tin.