Were using pipe cleaners for learning letters today. This is helping my Kindergartner make letter shapes, talk about the sound of letters, and putting letters together to form words. It’s the perfect activity for little ones learning the alphabet and beginning reading skills!
It’s great to expose kids to all sorts of different mediums when talking about and learning letters. With these pipe cleaners, you can make them into any shape, so these work well when learning upper case letters and lower case letters. It’s also the perfect activity when teaching a child to write and spell their name, as the pipe cleaners can be moved into any direction. Put two or three pipe cleaners together to make really large letters. You can also cut the pipe cleaners, with adult supervision, to help make smaller letters!
Learning Letters with Pipe Cleaners
Supplies for Pipe Cleaner Letters: 2 Supplies!
- pipe cleaners – aka chenille stems or fuzzy sticks
- kid scissors
Decide what letters you want to create. Talk about how the letter might be formed. You might even want to write the letters down on a piece of paper first so your child can see what the shape looks like and how to match it with a pipe cleaner.
We are making lowercase letters, working on word families. Here’s our -at family:
My daughter also came up with a fun pipe cleaner box for her words to go inside. This can make it a little more fun to display the words children have created.
Storage Tip:
I like to place my pipe cleaners in a small clear tub, the perfect size for the length of pipe cleaners and easy to see. We tend to collect a lot of these and this is a great place to store them.
More Pipe Cleaner Craft Ideas:
4th of July Pipe Cleaner Sparklers
Pipe Cleaner Lollipops
What a great idea. My son is going into kindergarten in a few weeks. This will be a great activity for him before he goes.
Just started school and haven’t had the time to get Wikki Stix. However, I have a box full of pipe cleaners. Yippee! Will add this to my lesson plans. Thanks,
Pipe cleaners are wonderful to have around! I love how you used them, and the pictures are great;)
Hi, just wanted to let you know that I’ve featured this post in my round-up of favorite Pipecleaner activities!
Brilliant!
So simple and fun! What a great way to teach the letters! I love your hands on learning.
What a great idea! I’ll have to try this with my daughter, too. My mom recently gave us some pipe cleaners for her birthday and I didn’t know what to use them for. Now, we’ll have an idea of what to do when she wakes up tomorrow. Thanks for sharing!
What a great idea! I love combining a craft with a language activity. By making the vowels blue and the consonants red, families could create a homemade version of the Montessori movable alphabet! I featured your post at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/LivingMontessoriNow
Wiki sticks work well, too!
PERFECT!! Why didn’t I think of this? ;)
My daughter would love this tactile experience with letters! We already have the pipe cleaners!
good idea for my spelling class…
adorable!
Love this idea! My kids always like playing with pipe cleaners and this is a fun way to combine learning letters!!!
I love it!