My son is at preschool age, and he is learning his letters. This learning letters target practice was right up his alley. He is all boy, and loves to shoot his suction cup bow and arrow at everything. Trust me, this isn’t an all boy activity either. When my girls saw what we were doing, they just had to get involved. So, while this particular activity focuses on learning letters, it can be adapted for sight words, math facts or foreign language learning. If you want more activities for learning letters, check out my ideas in this post.
Materials Needed for Learning Letters Target Practice
- White Board Markers or Window Crayons (great stocking stuffer gift, by the way) – affiliate link
- Nerf gun or bow and arrow – My son has the Zano bow, which works so good. I highly recommend it. (affiliate link)
Different children learn in different ways, but I find that most respond to learning when it is an activity that keeps them active. I used to be a teacher and private tutor. With my little guys I would always trick them into learning by playing games and keeping them moving. Flash cards work great, but how can you utilize the flash cards in a way in which they’ll respond? Make it fun! I need to say that kids learn at different speeds. You need to really be sensitive to your own child and not push them beyond what they are ready to do. Don’t be discouraged. Introduce books, letter games and even phone apps and see what resonates with them. If they are not ready, they are not ready. Just keep trying in a laid back and fun manner, and they eventually will begin to respond. Putting pressure on them only builds resistance and discouragement for both the adult and the child. Seek help if your child is not learning within the normal age range. All three of my children learned their letters at a wide range of ages.
How to Learn Letters Through Target Practice
This is most likely self explanatory through the pictures, but I thought I’d write it out anyway. You or the kids can write the letters on the window with window crayons or white board markers. You call out the letters, and they try and aim at the correct letter. If they don’t nail it, they could go up and point to show what they intended to shoot. I like to work on letters in small groups at a time so they can really get a lot of practice with the same letters over and over. Once they have those letters down, you can erase and start with a different group of letters. I always like to throw some of the learned letters back into the mix as you progress to make sure they can really recall them.