Submitted by: Sue Mowrer , a teacher at Marvin Marshall in Fair Oaks, California.

Objectives

What You Need:

• small letters (I use my magnetic letters)
• small pasta
• beans
• rice or anything you can hide the letters in
• tubs or large bowls
• large letters (I use the foam ones)

What You Do:

1. Prior to the activity, fill each tub with enough pasta that you can easily cover the small letters.

2. Place the foam letters on the floor where children can easily get to them.

3. Place two or three children at each tub and explain that when they hear (see) the word "go", they should dig through the pasta until they find one letter.

4. They then run to the foam letters and place their letter on the matching large foam letter, then return to the tub and find the next letter until all have been matched.

5. The teacher needs to watch closely for those children who fail to match the letters correctly and for those children who want to collect the most letters and simply throw a letter down without regard to the correct match.

6. Children love this active game.