Letter Magnets: Idea #122

Letter magnets are great teaching and learning tools. They are wonderful for practicing letter sounds, sight words, word families, fry words, etc. If your student is a tactile learner, they will love using magnets. Here a few ideas of what you could do with your letter magnets:

1. LETTER SOUNDS: Place all of the letter magnets at the bottom of the white board or refrigerator. Tell the student a letter sound. Student must find the letter and move it to the top of the board or refrigerator. This is an excellent way to see how quickly your student remembers the letter sounds. It is also a great way to see which letter sounds they may need to practice more.

2. SIGHT WORDS: Place all of the letter magnets at the bottom of the white board or refrigerator. Tell your student a sight word. Student must find the letters and put them in the correct order to spell the word. Sight words are more difficult to spell, but it will be interesting to see what your student can do just by seeing the words multiple times in reading.

3. WORD FAMILIES: Place all of the letter magnets at the bottom of the white board or refrigerator. Tell your student a word family (for example the -ap family or the -et family). Student then makes words that belong to that family using the magnets. They may surprise you with the amount of words they come up with.

You can practice any words your student struggles with by using these letter magnets. Make sure you have more than one of each letter. You will need them! If your student is doing a really good job, reward them. Let them draw a picture of the word they spelled on the white board. 

Since your student is using their hands to actually make each word, the word will stick with them. They will remember more of their sight words in their reading because of this simple exercise. I hope your student enjoys the letter magnets!