Saturday, October 17, 2009

Build-a-Letter Templates

image A week ago, in this post, I mentioned the letter templates and foam shapes I created for M to use in “building” letters.  There are a couple of books out there that do this same thing, but you know me – I won’t pay for something I can make myself. :) 

There has been a small amount of interest in these, and I have decided to post my templates for anyone who might want to do this too.  Click on this image:image
A couple of things you should know…
  1. The first two pages of the file have the shape templates that you will need to cut out and trace onto craft foam.  The rest of the pages show how to put them together for each letter.
  2. I’ve made notes on the file telling how many of each shape you will need to cut from foam in order to build any letter.  However, if you want enough foam shapes to put all of the letters together at the same time, you will have to cut several more.  We do one letter at a time, then pick another letter and re-use the shapes we need.  (Sure hope that makes sense!)
  3. Because the template pieces will need to overlap a little to make many of the letters, some of the lines are not showing up on the file.  For example the B:image I could not figure out a way to get them all to show, so part of the lines are missing.  It was the middle of the night when I created this and I finally gave up trying!  I suggest you go over your sheets with a marker and fill in the missing parts so your child will have an easier time *seeing* how to build the letters.  This was only a problem because there was extra space around the templates in the file.  Obviously, it won’t be a problem when you are using the actual foam pieces.
If you use these and blog about them, please link back here!

Only uppercase letters are included in this, but I hope to make a set for lowercase letters sometime soon!

Have a beautiful day! :)

24 comments:

  1. This is awesome! Thanks SO much for sharing!

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  2. That's quite impressive! We have the book How to Build an A and love it...I bet you'll love this too.

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  3. You Rock!!! Seriously you just made my day, and I am sure you will make my day every time we use these. How to write a letter properly is our hardest concept around here, and I am just so thankful to have this tool!

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  4. Oooh I'm practically jumping up and down here!! I've been wanting to do these for myself, but it's kind of far down on my to-do list. I'm so excited!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

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  5. Our Country Road - you mentioned writing letters properly and it made me think of this e-book -

    http://www.currclick.com/product_info.php?products_id=2257&it=1&filters=0_0_0

    I am using it with M and it is really helping. It has ideas for using your hands and arms to create letters, how to explain in a fun way how letters are formed, and imo it appeals to kids who are more physically-oriented (like M). Just thought I'd let you know in case you want to take a look at it. :) Thanks for your kind comment!

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  6. So cool! Thank you! I am going to do these and I'll let you know how they turned out.

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  7. This is pretty neat. Thank you so much for sharing!

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  8. You are so funny! I am just like you. I don't want to pay for something that I can make myself!!! Thanks for creating these!!! You are awesome!!!

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  9. Thank you for your generosity. I can't tell you how much it is appreciated. If you have a mailing list, please add me to it.

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  10. Wow, you are amazing. My daughter is a little young for build-a-letter sets but its so cool, I might make one for my niece.

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  11. Discovered this through the write-up at Activity Mom and have awarded you this week's Fantastic Friday Finds Award! Feel free to grab your award/button. If you think you have additional tutorials that would fit into the educational nature of our site, please feel free to submit them to us. I am looking forward to making these letter puzzles with my kids!

    http://quirkymomma.com/2010/fantasitc-friday2

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  12. Fantastic - thanks for sharing these! :)

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  13. This is awesome--SkylarKD just left a comment and told me you had these here! I totally missed this somehow, but I did a Build-an-A food activity post the other day. I"m going to add this as a link in that post.
    http://www.sillyeaglebooks.com/2010/01/how-to-build-a-diy.html

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  14. Cool, I just saw the link for these on The Activity Mom blog. My daughter likes to take strips of paper and form letters "out of the blue." I think she may like this activity. Thanks.

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  15. Thanks for these templates. I just printed them out and put the letters in sheet protectors in a binder. Then I cut each shape out of a different color of foam and placed them in a zippered binder pouch. I did want to say that I added another rectangle that was slightly smaller than the smallest ones you had in your file. It was necessary for two of the letters. Thanks again.

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  16. Just wanted you to know I shared this idea of yours and linked it to your post on We Teach (the alphabet group). I hope that's ok. It's too good not to pass on! =)
    http://weteach.ning.com/

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  17. Just wanted you to know I included this idea and link in my guest post on Our MOmmyhood today.

    http://www.ourmommyhood.com/2010/09/01/kid-activities/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OurMommyhood+%28Our+Mommyhood%29

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  18. So excited to find this!
    I just added it to my post on letter builders :)
    http://shiningourlights.blogspot.com/2010/11/letter-builders.html

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  19. Thank you for sharing this! It was just what I was looking for, without the $30+ price tag. You are fabulous!!

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  20. Thank you so much for your printables!!!

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  21. Thank you so much for sharing!

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  22. Thank you for sharing these! We will use them in our classroom soon.

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Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment; I love reading them! If you ask a question and don't receive a personal reply, check back here for the answer. Often I reply via comment to something that might be of interest to others.

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