Backyard letter and word hunt

Here’s another quick activity that parents can do at home. If you’re lucky enough to have some outdoor space, this activity combines a bit of phonics, and bit of reading and writing, and a bit of PE to keep the mental and physical muscles moving for our youngest learners.

What you need :

Some chalks

A bit of floor space

What you do:

Cover the floor with the letters of the alphabet written in chalk. This doesn’t have to be the English alphabet. You can do it with any script.

Create a list of words. This could be words taken from the topics set by your child’s class teacher or be drawn from the list of common exception words, or anything you like.

Challenge your kids to read the word, sound or spell it out, then the chase is on to find the letters to spell the word. Like this…

Extend by asking them to repeat the activity without the crib sheet. That is, say the words, sound or spell them out, then hunt down the letters.


If you have an activity that you would like to share, we’d love to hear from you. Posts should be no more than 500 words and should describe one activity (if you’d like to write more than one post on different activities do feel free). Send your post to h.chalmers@naldic.org.uk or submit it through the website here.

EALJournal.org is a publication of NALDIC, the subject association for EAL. Visit www.naldic.org.uk to become a member.