If you’re looking for a fun and hands-on way to teach letters and letter sounds to your kids, you should try making your own letter bins! We have a set of these bins in each of our in-person preschool classrooms and we use them almost every single day. The kids love having an exciting new way to learn their letters, and we love having an easy tactile method to help teach them! Keep reading below to see what they’re all about and check out the links to help you make your very own set, or grab the free downloadable idea list to take shopping with you.

How we use the letter bins

In our classrooms, we have large block letter printouts for each letter of the alphabet, in both upper and lowercase. When we are introducing a new letter, we give each child a letter paper, and then give them the matching item. So if we are learning letter A that day, we would give each child a paper with the letter A, and a few ants. The child can use the ants to trace the letter while we teach the appropriate way to write the letter. We use verbal prompts and teacher modeling to show how to write an A with our ants. So we would say “slant down, slant down, across, A” while using the ant to trace the letter on the paper. Then the students join us in saying the prompt and tracing the letter. Sometimes we also give them enough of the item to create the letter out of the item. We love having this tactile way to help students learn their letters!

Some other ways to use the letter bins

These letter bins are really versatile tools! Here are some other ways you could use them:

Hide different items and go on a beginning sound scavenger hunt
Have the child match each item to the correct letter
Put the items in ABC order based on their sound
Match items to letter cards or pictures
Write the name of the item and find the beginning letter
Sort items by their sounds into the correct containers
Put items in a bag and have each child reach in to choose and item, then tell what letter it starts with

We hope you love your letter bins as much as we love ours! Find the materials list with lots of links below, or print out the handy idea list to take with you on your next shopping trip.

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Materials:

26 small containers. We like these!

Letter A- small animals, apples, plastic ants, or animal crackers

Letter B- counting bears, buttons, beads, bugs

Letter C- cars, crayons, cardboard, cookies/crackers, candles, cotton/clouds, candy

Letter D-dinosaur counters, dice, plastic ducks or dogs, dot stickers, dominoes

Letter E-erasers, emojis, easter eggs, eggs

Letter F- feathers, foil, fish, fruit loops, fur, fuzzy fabric

Letter G- “gumballs”, goldfish crackers, ghosts

Letter H- hearts, hamburgers, hats

Letter I-icicle ornaments, ice cream

Letter J-jewels, jelly beans

Letter K-keys, koalas

Letter L-leaves or legos

Letter M- macaroni, monkeys

Letter N-newspaper, noodles, ninjas

Letter O-ocean animals, oranges

Letter P-pom poms, puzzle pieces, pennies, paper clips

Letter Q- QTips or fabric pieces to make a quilt

Letter R-rocks, rats

Letter S- straws, sandpaper, soccer ball charms or erasers

Letter T - tickets, tape (painters tape ripped to make the letter T), tissue paper, toothpicks

Letter U- drink umbrellas

Letter V- vines, valentines stickers, vegetable stickers or vegetable mini erasers, vehicle mini erasers

Letter W- worms

Letter X- fox figurines or mini erasers, print off tiny pictures of X-rays

Letter Y- yarn

Letter Z- zippers, zoo animals

Free Download

Click the button to grab a printable list of all the letter bin item ideas. You can print it off and take it to the dollar store with you to help inspire you while you’re looking for items!

letter bins ideas