Easy, Low Prep, Letter A Games

This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy.

❤ Sharing Is Caring

I’ve got three adorable little boys, my youngest will be turning 3 in December and with my trio we’ve enjoyed being involved in a number of home school, community, and toddler time groups as my boys have grown. I’ve also gotten to participate a fair amount in these activities as a teacher/toddler wrangler and I thought I’d share some of the simple letter A games I’ve made to play when we are highlighting A as the letter of the week.

I tried to come up with things that were quick and easy to put together, using things found around my house and I hope you’ll be able to use or at least find some inspiration in these games.

Game 1) Letter A Archery

Supplies Needed:

A Cardboard Box
Exacto Knife (or Scissors)
Marker
Straws
Q-tips

Game Setup:

On one side of your cardboard box draw a giant Box Letter A, then use your exacto knife to cut out around the letter so you end up with something that looks like the picture at the top of this post.

Game Play:

Give each child a straw and handful of Q-tips, set up a line or have them form a half circle around your letter A box, slide a Q-tip into the end of the straw, and blow/launch it toward the letter A, trying to get your Q-tip to go into one of the holes you cut out.

This works slight better with the preschool crowd than it does with the very young toddler crowd, but I think you’re probably the best judge of the kids you’re working with so plan accordingly. The older kids I’ve played it with have loved it, but also you might want to set up some rules for retrieval at the beginning, like wait until everyone is out of Q-tips or play it one at a time and see how many each person can get.

Game 2) Letter A Roads

Supplies Needed:

A Large Cardboard Box (or Two or Three)
A Marker
Toy Cars
Optional: Building Blocks, Toy Animals & Scenery, More Drawing Tools

Game Setup:

Cut your cardboard box so you have a big flat drawing board, then use your marker to draw a bunch of roads in the shape of the letter A. You can do upper and lower case, cursive, a row of capital A’s and lowercase A’s, you can change the size and direction of it. Whatever works out best for you and your board. (If you want to do the first game you can also make your box do double duty by having your roads on the inside and then unfolding it when you are ready to do the driving activity.

Game Play:

Pull out your board, hand out your cars and let the kids do some free play driving over/tracing your letter A’s with their cars. If you want to be really silly/fun you can try to convince them to have the cars make the “Ah” and “Aye” sounds as the drive around rather than “Vroom’s” and “Beeps”.

If you want to use the optional supplies you can let the kids build cities, bridges and building over your roads, or draw new things to add on to what you started with. For me, I just kind of embrace the chaos and let them play with what I feel like I can handle at the time.

Game 3) Letter A Soup

Supplies Needed:

A big bowl/pot/container
A big Spoon or Tongs
A bunch of objects that start with letter A and a few that don’t
(I’ve got a page with a list of 100 objects that start with Letter A if you want ideas, it can also be fun to ask each of the kids to bring something that starts with Letter A ahead of time and use it for this game.)

Game Setup:

Take all your Letter A objects and the other non letter A objects and put them in your container. Mix them around a bit.

Game Play:

Call a child up and let them use the tongs or spoon to scoop an item out of the pot. Have them hold it up for everyone and say the name of it (for toddlers you can say the name of it) and have them tell you what letter it starts with.

You can add a few variations to how this one is played.

You can have them figure out if it’s an “A” item or not an “A” item and sort the ones that are pulled out of the pot into two piles.

You can also make it a little tricker for older kids by having them make the sound and sort them into three piles, objects that start with a hard A sounds (Aye), objects that start with a soft A sound (Ah) and objects that don’t start with A.

If you happen to try any of these and have thoughts on other variations, games or ways to make it better, I’d love to know, please drop me a comment. Otherwise, I hope they work great for you and that you and your kids are able to enjoy them 🙂