Letter Hunt Game for Preschool

Sharing is caring!

Similar to our Letter Running Game, our Letter Hunt Game for preschool makes learning the alphabet a fun, hands-on, and sensory experience for students. Hands-on activities like this one are one of the best methods for young children to learn and retain information. The brain loves whole-body involvement in learning activities!

This game gets your kids up and moving to learn or review the letters of the alphabet.

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. If you use them, I might be rewarded credit or a commission of the sale. Please note that I only recommend tools that I personally use and love and I always have my readers’ best interest at heart.

Letter Manipulatives We Love

A manipulative is anything your child can hold or touch to study a subject. Letter manipulatives come in so many different varieties, you can definitely find something that will fit your budget. If you have a printer and printer paper, you can print these free letter flashcards for pennies. If you have board games, look through the games you have to see if one of them already has letter game pieces you can use. (Scrabble is an obvious example.) If you don’t mind spending a little bit of money, you can get something with texture or shape to increase the sensory learning experience.

• Jumbo Letter Magnets from Learning Resources.
• Melissa and Doug Wooden Alphabet Magnets.
• Foam Letter Magnets.
• Tactile Letter Kit.
• Textured Letter Flashcards from Carson Delllosa.

Materials for the Letter Hunt Game

• Letter manipulatives
• items around the house
• paper and pencil
• dry erase board
• dry erase marker

Letter Hunt Game: Beginner’s Version

1. Choose around 5 letters you have been working on with your learner and hide them around a room.  (This could be recent letters we have worked on in class, the letters in your learner’s name etc)
2. Send your learner on a hunt for the letters.
3. When your learner finds a letter ask them to identify it and the sound it makes (assist as needed)
4. Next have your learner bring the letter back to their writing tools and write the letter.
5. Send your learner off to find another letter. Repeat for as long as your learners attention span allows.

Letter Hunt Game: Advanced Version

1. Choose a few sight words you have been working on and hide the letters for each in different rooms. E.g. hide t-h-e around the kitchen, a-n-d around the bedroom, y-e-s around the bathroom etc.
2. Choose a room to start in and tell your learner the sight word they are trying to find.
3. Next send your learner on a hunt for the letters.
4. When your learner finds a letter ask them to identify it and the sound it makes.
5. Once your learner finds all the required letters, ask them to build and then write the sight word.
6. Repeat in another room with a new sight word.

Unexpected Ways to Hide Letters for the Letter Hunt Game

It might be fun to change up the game a bit and play several different ways. After you’ve followed the directions below, you could try these variations to keep interest high and keep reviewing those letters.

Variation One: Place the letters on or near an item that starts with the letter sound. Children have to figure out and say the name of the item. You could put the letter n near a doll’s nose for instance. What if you used removable alphabet stickers for this variation. Then the student would only have to name whatever the letter was stuck to and collect the removable stickers as they go.

Variation Two: Place letters inside plastic Easter eggs and hide the eggs inside or outside. This will be a fun way to play near Easter time. If you had tiny toys or images of something that begins with that letter, you could place those in the egg as well.

Variation Three: Use a dry-erase marker to write letters on different glass surfaces around your home. This could be windows, door glass, shower walls, mirrors, etc. Anything glass. Then have your student hunt for and find the letters on the glass in each room and copy them onto his or her paper.

Other Fun Ways to Learn the Alphabet

Alphabet Sensory Bags. In this fun activity, kids get to play with paint in a plastic baggy.

Try Building Letters out of Tangrams with these fun activity cards.

Use your window and whiteboard markers for this simple letter recognition activity.

Dot Painting the Alphabet is a simple and exciting activity using paint.