Early elementary-aged students enjoy playing with small cars and building roads. Use this type of play to teach children how to connect their alphabet letters. Purchase large letters or trace them out of large pieces of poster board. Have students design a road around the classroom floor, making sure each letter touches another. Then have each student take a car of her choice and travel the alphabet road using the proper way to form each letter. For extra help with this, draw arrows on each letter to help students remember the right way to connect the lines together.
Preschool and early elementary students need hands on activities to develop fine motor skills and refine their letter writing ability. A good activity to help with this is drawing letters with their fingers in sand. Use the sand table in your classroom and place in it plain sight of the alphabet letters on the wall. Have students work at the sand table in groups of two and practice connecting lines to make letters with their index fingers in the sand. You can make this part of center rotation or make it a special activity to enrich a story you've read about the alphabet. Breaking this activity down by just doing the letter of the week five to 10 times at the sand table is also an effective option.
Whipped cream is a sweet treat and also a fun option for teaching kids how to connect the lines to make the letters of the alphabet. Provide each student with a piece waxed paper over a piece of colored construction paper. This makes it easier to see the letters as they trace them. Make sure each student is wearing an art shirt. Go around to each student's table and place a dollop of whipped cream on the waved paper. After each child has their whipped cream, have them practice drawing letters with their index fingers, paying particular attention to properly connecting the lines of the letters in the right order. Add whipped cream to each child's paper as needed. Use this to practice the entire alphabet or to focus on just the letter of the week or day.
This game is an effective alternative to regular letter writing practice. Set up chairs in a circle and place a letter and colored marker on each chair. Each student needs a clipboard with paper or a dry erase board. As some favorite music plays, children walk around the circle. When the music stops, children find the closest chair to them, pick up the letter and marker and write the letter on their paper or dry erase board. Review how to connect the lines of the letters before playing to game to make sure each student is practicing the skill correctly.