I made this ABC box for Lizzie over a year ago.
Do you want to make one too?
Here’s how I did it.
Supplies
4 kid’s-sized shoe-box lids
Cereal boxes (or any type of cardboard)
Hot glue gun
Spray paint (optional)
Letter (ABC’s) manipulatives (I used foam letters that I found at the dollar store)
Directions
1. Glue the shoe box lids together as shown in the picture.
2. Using the cereal boxes (or other cardboard), measure and cut thin strips that will be used as the dividers between each letter. You need 26 small sections and one larger section on the bottom, as shown in the picture. Glue the dividing cardboard pieces to the shoeb0x lids.
3. Spray paint the entire thing one color (this step isn’t necessary, of course, but mine looked pretty wacky until I made it one color).
4. After the spray paint dries, fill the sections with letter manipulatives in alphabetical order. You can use ABC magnets, foam letters, paper letters, etc. Whatever you have on hand!
What can you do with your ABC box?
There are numerous things that you can do with it, but I made it specifically for the purpose of helping Lizzie explore words.
I placed the letters “I” and “P” at the bottom of the box and told Lizzie to put various letters at the front of the letters to see if it makes a word or not. She chose any letter she wanted and put it at the front of the word. “Zip” is a word. Then she put the letter “Z” back and chose a different letter. It’s a good activity in deciphering words and non-words. You could practice any rhyming word with this box (“ar”, “at”, “op”, etc., etc., etc.).
This box is also helpful in learning sight words. You could give your child a card with a sight word written on it and then he/she could read the word, and then copy it by spelling it out in their box.
Simple sentences could also be made. Lizzie made the following sentence on her own.
Sure, the sentences may not make much sense, but this is just for fun.
I am learning to bite my tongue and praise her efforts as much as possible. I am learning that there is a time for correction, and a time to let things go.
Right now, she is just having fun. There will be a time for correction. 🙂
She was very proud of the following sentence:
I must admit, I told her that it should be “an apple” rather than “a apple”.
I try…but I’m not perfect! 🙂
Mommie Nation 