Any version of a set of upper & lower case letters that can be moved by hand. Think Unifix blocks (see our Instagram post), bricks (also posted), wooden cubes, Post-Its hand made, get creative.

This game is easy to adapt to whatever suits you best, but roughly:

1. Think of short three letter words (we like CVC words to start). Increase the difficulty by choosing CCVC words (we cover these in Episode 4a).

2. Pick the first, middle or last letter to change.

3. Repeat by making ‘sets’ of words. E.g. sat/bat/cat, sat/set/sit, dog/dot/dob.

4. Guide your kiddo by actually playing together, it’s not a test or teaching time. Laugh when they make a silly word, be proud when they try something new.

Below are skills taken straight from the Australian Curriculum so you can feel confident this play is adding to your kiddo’s at-school learning.

• Recognise that words are made up of groups of letters

• Recognise & name all upper- & lower-case letters (graphs) & the most common sound (phoneme) that each letter represents

• Recognise & generate rhyming words

• Orally manipulate sounds (phonemes) in spoken words by addition, deletion & substitution of initial, medial & final phonemes to generate new words (phonological awareness)

This is becoming too jargon-y but you get the picture…

Here’s an example list of types of other things to do:

• order the letters of the alphabet

• match the upper case letter to the lower case letter

• make it more challenging as your kiddo progresses by manipulating longer combinations of letters (e.g. keep /ow/ at the end of a word but change the beginning letter)

• make it easier to start with by simply using CV words (e.g. it/in/is, up/us, at/an/am)