Use cardboard letters to decorate your classroom or home. Paint or glue colorful paper to the cardboard letters and help the children form words. You can punch holes in the top of the letters to string them together or staple them right to the wall. Consider making an alphabet for each wall. You can also glue the names of objects to different objects in the room (e.g., label the bookshelf, the cabinet and the teacher's desk). This project promotes the development of a positive connection between students and the learning environment and saves you money on decorations.
Kids and adults love playing with refrigerator magnets. With cardboard letters and a few sheets of self-adhesive magnet you can create your own set for use during playtime. Have preschoolers paint or color the cardboard letters. Then laminate them and stick a couple of magnetic strips to the back of each. At the end of the school year, students may take home the magnets they decorated, or the entire set may be left at the preschool for the next batch of kids.
Make colorful name plates to decorate your desks or cubbyholes. Use a rectangular sheet of construction paper as a background. Glue colored cardboard letters to the sheet. Then decorate with drawings, glitter and stickers. Name plates should be laminated for added durability. This craft may be adapted to create special gifts for Mother's/Father's Day or personalized plaques to hang on a bedroom door. If you want to avoid a sticky situation, use the cardboard letters like positive stencils, rather than gluing them to the plaque.
Support a healthy sense of curiosity by giving your preschoolers a place to store their thoughts and experiences. Your explorer book may be an actual notebook or a stack of oak tag squares bound together with yarn. Glue cardboard letters to the front of the book as initials. Additional cardboard lettering can be used inside of the book when spelling out the names of people and objects. Consider making explorer journals before a field trip to the park; that way your child can fill his journal with drawings of his favorite plants and animals.