The Great Alphabet Hunt

The great alphabet hunt


Needed: index cards and a pen

Write a letter of the alphabet on each card so you will have 26 cards, each with 1 letter.

With your child come up with an item in your house for each letter. If you can’t think of an item starting with that letter how about a color item the letter starts with. If you have multiple children use colored cards and assign each a color with different words or have them work as a team.

These were the items we came up with, just as an example. It required sounding out each letter with the 4 year old I played this with. He did come up with most of the words on his own by wandering around the house and sounding out each object he saw. After playing the game he marveled at some of the new words he learned (when he came to plates I pointed out they were also called dishes)

A apple
B Bananas
C cat
D Dishes
E entryway
F Flowers
G Green chair
H Hat (coat closet hook)
I Ice Cream
J Joker (from Batman, of course)
K We drew a picture of a kangaroo together and counted this as a freebee
L lamp
M Mat (welcome mat)
N Noodles
O Orange Juice
P Peanut butter
Q Quack (duck toy)
R Refrigerator
S Sponge
T telephone
U Underwear (underwear drawer, or trickier laundry room)
V videogames
W water
X (we found an item shaped like an x, train tracks)
Y yellow flowers on table
Z Zebra toy in toy box

I wrote each object as we came up with them on the back of the card. After we completed the alphabet he closed his eyes for the duration of a song playing (an egg timer could work too) while I went and distributed cards.


I put each card in easy eye access like sticking out from under the peanut butter jar. Laying on the dishes, etc.

This way kids don’t total the house while they run around looking for them. In the end it requires them to know the alphabet in order, recall the items they come up with, and know where they are situated in the house. An added bonus is the opportunity to increase their vocabulary by introducing new things that they see every day. If he couldn’t remember I gave hints like “it grows on a tree. You drink it every day for breakfast.” We also played “hot” and “cold” with this to prompt his memory.
In the end it was a blast running around the house to find all the cards, looking in the fridge and other fun places.

In a future post we use methods learned during this game to encourage kids to put away laundry and other age appropriate tasks around the house.