Letter D Unit Study for Preschoolers

Are you ready to jump in to the letter D?

This week we are going to learn the letter D by playing, painting and play doughing our way through it – it’s going to be SO fun!!

Ready to get started? Here we go…

Side note: Every kiddo is ready on their own time, the one thing we have noticed over and over is that preschoolers really just want to play – and we’re all for playing our way into learning.

We have done a little more research than we care to admit about letters and fun ways to teach them to preschoolers, everything you’re going to see below is just an outline, specifically for new homeschoolers. The ideas we outline here are just that – ideas. You’ll want to expand on them based on your own interests, supplies and more.

SEE ALL OF OUR LETTER POSTS HERE

TEACHING THE LETTER D TO PRESCHOOLERS

Are you ready? If you’re working on the letter D with your preschooler, here’s a step by step guide that will help you teach the letter D with SO much fun and zero tears.

What You’ll Need (This is the same list for every letter)

Play dough
Acrylic Paint
Freezer Baggie
Dry Erase Marker
Pom Poms
Magnetic Letter Board
Dry Erase Pocket or Board
Dot Markers
ABC Chart

Optional Items:

Rice
Baking Tray for Rice

We work on our “Letter of the Week” and introduce a new letter every Monday. We DO NOT review previous letters with the exception of singing the ABC song on Monday.

First things first, Life with Peanut has an amazing printable packet for each letter. In this case we bought the Letter D packet. We print all of the pages that we need to print (we don’t print the cover sheets, etc). We also print two of the big letter outline sheets and put one in a dry erase pocket folder so we can use it for playdough and dry erase. *Read about our favorite printer here.

We learn the new letter of the week while using the dry erase or playdough to form the letter and then watch this video to listen to the sound it makes and learn about words that start with the letter.

We will briefly review the letters we’ve learned in previous weeks, the sounds they make and some of the things that start with those letters. We usually just do this the first day when we introduce the new letter.

Example “Remember when we learned the letter ? Do you remember how to write the letter ? What sound does the letter make?”

We have created free printable review sheets to download here.

We sing the ABC song while following along with a paint brush or other pointer. You can get creative with this one.

Being Crafty While Teaching Letters

We do not spend a lot of time on letter work unless our kiddos are really into it. We spend as much time as they want. Some days we make it to talking about the letter and the ABC song and call it a day. Some days our preschooler wants to blaze through all of the sheets for the entire week.

Because of that, we break it up into various play through learning exercises.

A few ideas we love:

We put various letters, including the letter of the week on the magnetic board and ask them to take all of the letters off BUT the letter of the week.
We have our preschooler form the letter of the week with playdough on the large letter print out we printed and put in the dry erase pocket.
We have our preschooler grab their paint baggie and write the letter in paint. This is reusable. Honestly, the less paint, the better.
We write the letter of the week and various other letters and ask them to erase only the letter of the week or only the letters that are not the letter of the week.
We offer up a baking sheet of rice and ask them to write the letter of the week in the rice. Sand also works great.

We DO NOT do these every day. We rotate them and usually do one a day. Sometimes our preschooler will ask to do a specific activity or want to do a couple of them. We let her lead what she’d like to do that day.

*I AM NOT a registered Teacher. I can just tell you what has worked for our kiddos, what others have recommended and what my current preschooler is doing successfully. Please seek your own advice on what works for your particular child. We are Wild+Free parents. <3