Letter Recognition: Alphabet Train

After graduating with a degree in Elementary Education, I appreciate a good file folder game, especially when kids can play with little effort expected on my part. Ledger, my three year old, knows each letter in the alphabet, but I’ve noticed he struggles with a few lower case letters, (Most books are all capital letters). When my friend posted an image similar to this on instagram, I knew I needed to recreate it into a file folder game and make a few changes to help with capital and lower case letter recognition. I also added an extra set of wheels to help with reading in the future :)

 Alphabet Train

What You Need:
9 Pieces of cardstock or construction paper (I let Ledger pick the colors)
Velcro dots
Black marker
Scissors
Somewhere to laminate each boxcar/wheels and train
Tape
The two printables posted below in the box app

• Cut 4 pieces of construction paper in half and write three CAPITAL letters on each half, (Only two letters will be left on the last boxcar). Save a little room below each letter to fit the velcro dots.
• Print the wheels printable from below, write lower case letters on each wheel. (I used three different colors for the wheels) I also wrote one word starting with each letter for when Ledger begins reading. Three pieces of paper was enough to do both.
• I had a few wheels left over so I added each member’s name of our family. If I did it again, I’d leave a few empty for back ups, we’ve already lost the “i”.  
• Print the black train, also shared below.
• Laminate the train, each box car, and three wheel pages. (I figured I’d laminate it if I was going to put the work into it. My boys are so rough, I knew it would be destroyed after one use).

• Cut out the train, box cars, and wheels. Add a velcro dot under each capital letter on the boxcars, and on the back of each wheel.
• Tape the train and each boxcar on the wall and you’re ready to go!

I love this File Folder game because it really does challenge my three year old. He can sing the alphabet song, and recognize every capital letter, but has rarely seen the entire alphabet listed in front of him and it takes him a minute to find some of the letters. When he matches a wheel to each letter, we practice the different sounds each letter makes.

 (He was thrilled to find his name)

When we’re finished I pack it up into a vanilla file folder and put it in the bin with the other file folder games we have. It makes it easy to rotate games so Ledger doesn’t get sick of the games

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Enjoy!