The Main Idea:
This is a letter sounds activity, where letter sounds are written on a roll of paper. The goal of this activity is to teach, or reinforce the recognition of letter sounds. This is done by writing the letters on a roll of paper and using it to have a toy car race.
The letter sounds that you use will be based on what your child is working on at the moment.
*Unsure of what letter sounds to use? Scroll down to the bottom of this post for some ideas.
What to do in this letter sounds roll of paper activity:
What you will need:
- A roll of paper. It can be lots of sheets of paper stuck together to form a long line, a blank till receipt roll, or a roll of brown paper.
- A pen.
- A list of the sounds that you want to practice.
- Some toy cars.
- Separate the paper into sections by drawing lines across it at regular intervals.
- Write the letter sounds that you want to practice, one in each section of the roll of paper. Try to use a few that your child or student knows well, and some that they are working on. Between 8-10 letters is enough.
- Roll out the paper. If necessary, fix it with something so that it stays flat.
How to play:
- Read through the letter sounds that are on the roll of paper before you start. This is an important step – introducing the sounds to your student or child builds in success as it gives them a reminder of all the letter sounds they will be coming across in the activity.
- Line two toy cars up at the bottom of the paper. Set them off with a ‘Ready, steady, go!’ and see which sound they stop on.
- Read the sound that your car stops on, and then encourage your child or student to read the sound that their car has stopped on.
- It is also very helpful to say the sounds on the paper throughout the game. For example, “I hope I land on /s/.” Or, “Neither of us have landed on /i/ yet!” (see here for further explanation of letter sounds).
- Set the cars back at the start of the roll of paper and repeat between 5 and 10 times.
- When you have had enough, look at any words you have not landed on.
Is this letter sounds activity right for your child or student?
Sometimes it can be difficult to know if the content of an activity will help your child. For this activity, the questions below might help:
- Have they started to match letters to sounds?
- Can they ‘orally’ sound out words? (see Blending and Segmenting)
- Have they started to spot letters in their environment, for example, pointing out their name, or seeing a letter on a road sign?
If the answer is ‘yes’, then this is a great activity, to teach or reinforce letter sounds.
To Note:
Not every game or activity goes to plan! Here are some things to watch out for in this letter sounds roll of paper activity:
- You may already have guessed it, but the biggest problem I have found with this game, is that it becomes a game of ‘whizzing cars’ across the paper, just to get to the furthest letter sound! So, I often give each segment a number of points, so that the child can gain points by landing on certain words. Often the first time of playing the game goes well, but when it is repeated and the student is familiar with it, then the points are introduced!
- Sometimes, one letter sound might only gets read once. So it can be a good idea to repeat some of the letters, especially if you know that your child or student is finding a certain letter difficult.
- It might also be that one letter sound is not landed on at all. So, throughout the game you can say things like “I’m going to try and land on…” and “Oh I was so close to…” or “I zoomed right over…” That way you are drawing attention to each letter sound. It is also another reason to repeat the sounds on the roll so that each sound is written at least twice. That way, you are more likely to read all of the sounds. You could also turn it into a challenge – you could say “I wonder if you can manage to stop exactly on…”
- As there is no definite end to this game, you could mark the letters off as you read them, then if you land on them again, read a word next to it, or aim for certain words.
How to Adapt:
This game is easily adaptable. Here a few ideas. You can:
- As your child or student becomes more confident in saying the letter sound, you could include the letter name as well. For example, ‘s’ says /s/ (see here for further explanation)
- This game is also good in drawing attention to the similarities in letters. For example, use ‘n’ and ‘u’. Notice the differences and similarities between the letters.
- You don’t have to use toy cars. There are lots of different ways of landing on the letter sound. For example, throwing a ball, or small pebble, or any type of aiming toy to hit a letter sound. I’ve used plastic darts before, as well as wet paper towels! You could even jump to the letter sounds and then say the sound you have jumped to.
Here’s how it looked when I did it in ‘real life’!
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