This interactive and hands on game to teach matching uppercase and lowercase letters is a fun gross motor game for preschool and kindergarten. Use this interactive letter activity along as an alphabet matching with objects and a sensory-motor learning activity!
Matching uppercase letters to lowercase letters is a literacy task that supports reading skills, but also challenges visual discrimination skills, form constancy, and visual scanning, all of which are visual processing skills needed for handwriting and reading comprehension. What’s fun about this activity is that it builds these skills in a fun way!
Be sure to grab our color by letter worksheet to work on letter matching, visual discrimination skills.
Matching Uppercase and Lowercase Letters
Learning letters and matching upper and lower case letters is a Kindergarten skill that can be tricky for some kids. We made this easy prep letter identification activity using items you probably already have in the house. If you’ve seen our blog posts over the last few days, you’ve noticed we’re on a learning theme using free (or mostly free) items you probably already have.
We’re sharing 31 days of learning at home with free materials this month along with 25 other bloggers in the 31 days of homeschooling tips series.
Today’s easy letter learning activity can use any letters you have around the house or magnetic letters and coffee filters.
While this activity is almost free if you’ve got the items at home already, we’re sharing the affiliate links for the items in this post.
How to play this interactive letter matching activity
You’ll need just a few items for this letter matching activity:
- Magnetic letters
- marker
- coffee filters (but paper towels or recycled paper would work as well.
To set up the activity, there are just a few steps:
(Amazon affiliate links included below.)
- Grab the magnetic letters from the fridge and 26 coffee filters.
- Use a permanent marker to write one lower case letter of the alphabet on each coffee filter.
- With your child, match the magnetic letters to the lowercase letters on the coffee filters.
- Ask the child to help you crumble each letter inside the coffee filter that has its matching lowercase letter.
- Continue the play!
More ways to match uppercase and lowercase letters
By matching the magnetic uppercase letter to the lowercase letter on the coffee filter, kids get a chance to incorporate whole body movements and gross motor activity while looking for matching letters.
With your child, first match up each lower case coffee filter letter to the upper case magnetic letter.
You can spread the filters out to encourage visual scanning and involve movement in the activity, OR you can stack the coffee filters in a pile and one by one match up the letters. This technique requires the child to visually scan for the upper case magnet letters.
Try both ways for more upper/lower case letter practice!
We then wrapped the coffee filters around the magnets in a little bundle. There are so many games you can play with these upper and lower case letters:
- Match the same letter– match uppercase letters to uppercase letters and lowercase letters to lowercase letters.
- Alphabet matching with objects– Match an object that starts with the letter of the alphabet. Use small objects inside the coffee filter and match it to lowercase letters written in the coffee filter with uppercase magnet letters.
- Match the picture with the letter– Print off pictures of words that start with each letter of the alphabet. Then match the picture with letters of the alphabet using lowercase letters written on the filter and uppercase letters in magnetic letter form.
- Play a letter memory game– Hide letters around the room and challenge kids to find the letters in order to match the uppercase letter to the lowercase letters.
- Letter sound matching– Make a letter sound and challenge kids to find the letter that makes that sound.
- Letter Hide and Seek- Hide the bundled up letters around the room while your child hides his eyes. Send him off to find the letters and ask him to open the bundle and identify the letter.
- Letter Toss Activity- Toss the coffee filter bundles into a bucket or bin. Any letters that make it into the bin are winners!
- Name the letters- Unwrap the bundles and name the letters. Spread the coffee filters out around the room. Toss magnetic letters onto the matching lower case letter.
- Letter toss game- Toss a bean bag onto the coffee filters. The child can identify the lower case letter, then go to the pile of magnetic letters and find the matching upper case letter.
Can you think of any more ways to work on upper and lower case letter matching with coffee filters and magnetic letters?
Matching Big and Small Letters
The nice thing about this activity is that you can teach the concepts of big and small letters. When we say “big letters” and “small letters”, we are showing the concept of letters that touch the top and bottom lines, or the upper case letters.
And teaching children the difference between those big letters and the small letters which touch just the middle point are part of the visual discrimination process that is needed for handwriting on the lines, or line awareness skills.
Looking for more interactive letter activities to match uppercase and lowercase letters? The Letters! Fine Motor Kit is for you!
This 100 page printable packet includes everything you need for hands-on letter learning and multisensory handwriting!
This digital and printable packet includes these multisensory handwriting and letter formation materials:
- A-Z Multisensory Writing Pages
- Alphabet Fine Motor Clip Cards
- Cut and place Fine Motor Mazes
- A-Z Cotton Swab Cards
- A-Z Pattern Block Cards
- Fine Motor Letter Geo-Cards
- A-Z Color and Cut Letter Memory Cards
- Color By Size Sheets
- A-Z Building Block Cards
- A-Z Play Dough Letter Formation Cards
- Graded Lines Box Writing Sheets
- Alphabet Roll and Write Sheets
- Pencil Control Letter Scan
- Color and Cut Puzzles
