Best Toys For Learning Letters and Numbers
Learning letters and numbers typically starts at pre-school. It can be a difficult skill to learn and, as usual, learning happens faster when it is fun. My daughter just turned four in October. Since she started school this summer, I have noticed an accelerated letter recognition. We started playing and teaching her letters and numbers when she was two, but the learning of those has taken off immediately as she started school.
Top picks: toys for learning letters and numbers
There are many great toys out there that make the process more interesting for kids and below are some of my top picks.
Wipe-Clean Workbooks
My daughter loved the wipe-clean workbooks as she can trace over the letters or numbers, wipe them off, and repeat. The pictures of the friendly monsters workbook are truly entertaining for her and she can sit for 30+ minutes tracing these (and sometimes coloring them). I feel like they are great preparation for pre-k and kindergarten. The fact they are reusable is super helpful - wipe it away and then practice some more.
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- Wipe-Clean Capital Letters (aka. the Friendly Monsters Workbook)
- Pre-K Alphabet Wipe-Clean Workbook
- Wipe-Clean Workbook: Numbers 1-50
Alphabet and Numbers Puzzles:
These puzzles were a great start to learning numbers and letters recognition. They also make a great gift for toddlers. My daughter started playing with them when she was 1.5 years old. Apart from putting the puzzle together, she loved stacking them, grouping them by color, and using them as pretend food for her stuffed toys.
Bath time letters fun
I bought these foam letters and numbers last year and we have had tons of bath fun with them. They are super soft and squishy and stick easily to the bath tiles and tub. At the same time, they are sturdy enough and we have been using them for a year so far without any issues. Also, they are small enough to bring on an airplane or car trip.
If you store them into one of the mesh organizers, they will dry faster and not get moldy.
Typing on my laptop
Lately, we have been practicing typing words on my MacBook Pro. She enjoys doing that mostly because once you type in the name of an animal or an object, a picture of it appears at the top TouchBar. At the same time, we are learning the other parts of the keyboard like the return and space keys. We have also been practicing how to search for things on the internet and her favorite thing is typing the name of an animal or cartoon character in Google and then scrolling to watch pictures of it.
Making cards for holidays and occasions
Another way we practice our writing is by making cards for people. If a close friend or family has a birthday coming up, we will sit down and make a card for them. The part we do first is writing “happy birthday” or whatever the occasion is. After that I let her go crazy withdrawing on the card and putting stickers. Walking to the mailbox down the road and mailing them was another activity that kept us busy during the summer.