Uppercase and Lowercase Letters

• Draw a tree on the blackboard and surround it with blank squares as if they are leaves or flowers hanging off the branches. Ask the children what should be put in the squares. Write the capital letter "A" in one box, and then challenge students to name the next letter. Continue to add letters until you have finished writing the alphabet. Point to random letters and ask students to name a word that starts with that letter. Erase some letters and challenge students to come up to the board and fill in the missing blanks with letters. Repeat the exercise by writing lowercase letters in the squares.
  
  

Sound and Symbol Relationships

• Write a group of words that start with the same letter, such as "ball," "bush" and "balloon," that represent round shapes. Challenge students to identify the sound and letter that all of the words share. Ask the students to think of other words that also begin with "b" and write the words they brainstorm on flashcards to create a word bank. Hand out copies of a story and markers to the children. Ask one student to sit in the writer's chair and read the story aloud. Challenge the children to underline the words that start with "b" in the story.
  
  

Consonants and Blends

• Underline the "d" in dock and the "cl" in clock in the poem "Hickory, Dickory, Dock" with a colored marker. Underline the "---ock" in both words with another color. Locate, draw or create a picture of a mouse running down the side of a grandfather clock. Make copies of the poem and illustration and hand them out to the children. Read the poem aloud, acting out the mouse's race up and down the clock. Ask the children to identify the rhyming words in the poem. Point out the "d" and the "---ock" and how the sounds blend. Repeat with "cl" and "---ock." Challenge students to think of words that start with a different sound, such as "rock," "stock" and "block." Read the new words aloud and have the children repeat them after you.
  
  

The Alphabet

• Use alphabet blocks to point out letters and distinguish them by name and sound. Hand out magazines, construction paper, scissors and glue sticks. Ask students to choose a letter from the alphabet and find pictures of objects that start with that letter. Have them cut out the pictures and paste them on the construction paper to create alphabet books. Use a hole-puncher to string the book together or staple the pages. Gather the children in a circle with the finished books. Challenge each child to name the images in his book, emphasizing the beginning letter of the word.