Preschool Activities: I Spy Game

When preschool children are first learning their letters and sounds we help bring awareness to the sounds in words. It is a discovery that words have many sounds within them. We first want to bring their attention to the beginning sounds of words and progress from there. To do this we play a game at a rug or a table with objects with the focus on the beginning sound.

What You Need

– Tray or plate to hold the items.

– Small house hold items that fit on tray (pencil, cotton ball, tissue, marble, nail, comb, candle, etc.) or small figures of animals or items from doll houses.

Directions

1. Go over what each item you’ve chosen is called so that everyone knows what everything is called.

2. Explain how we are going to play a game called the sound game, you will think of something you put in front of the child but you are not going to tell them what you are thinking, they have to listen to your sound clue to guess what you are thinking.

3. Put two or three items (depending on the child) that start with different sounds off the tray and in front of the child and say “I’m thinking of the item on the table that starts with the sound ___ “ (If it was a marble then you would make the sound of “Mmmmmm”, NOT the name we call the letter like in the ABC song, and invite the child to guess what you are thinking of).

4. If they guess the item you will let them know that was exactly what you were thinking! Now you can put two or three new items that all start with a different sound in front and continue the game until child is ready to stop.