DIY Montessori lowercase letter play - Lu 26 months

I wanted to create an activity to play off two of my daughter's current interests: piggy banks and letters.

 

Here's what I came up with: 

 

All materials were purchased at Michael's. The wooden disks, the box (without the slot), the letters and the tray. Thankfully, when this idea came to me, I already had most of the materials on hand ...  just needed to purchase the stickers.

 

The consonants are red and the vowels blue to resemble our Montessori moveable alphabet. Here's a picture of what ours looks like: 

 

What's great about Lu playing with this game I created is that it also doubles up as an extension to her letter work. Playing with these discs helps her to gain exposure to new letters through play.

 

 

So far Lu  knows a, s, t, m, o, p and h letter sounds. I set them out when I introduced this activity to her.

 

Here you can see her pointing to the A, saying "aeh."

 

What I didn't know, until we played with this last night, is that she also knows K and identified it as "kuh" when she found it in the bowl. She seemed so proud!

 

This was made for play, so I'm allowing her to explore and continue to show me her interests. If she holds a letter up and looks to me for the sound, I tell her. Otherwise, this is her play and she shows me the way:)

 

I love how this game helps her develop those fine motor muscles she'll be using soon for writing!

 

As much as she enjoys putting the letter discs into the box, she also seems to enjoy opening the box and dumping them into the bowl.

 

I plan to make a few more with numbers 1-10. For inspiration, you could add stickers or draw on them to teach:

 

shapes

colors

animals

numbers

 

Enjoy! And, please let me know what you think.