Letter i Phonics Craft Activity

Letter i craft

This week prekinders are learning the letter i and the sound that it makes. The vowel letter sounds are always hard for children to learn as the sound they make don't sound like their letter name. What I find that makes it more confusing for children is the worksheets and crafts for them usually have a mix of the short and the long sounds.

Beginning phonics always teach the short sounds first but when you teach the two sounds together, children become confused. 

Take for example the letter i. Some worksheets and crafts will be based on the short sound such as igloo, indian, iguana, inchworm and insects. But because insects is a not a cute craft to make and igloo (children only know what this is from animations), indian (too stereotyped and politically incorrect), iguana (to children an iguana is a lizard), inchworm (come on, children recognise the worm as a worm not as an inchworm, especially in Australia where children wouldn't know what an inch is) aren't really relevant to children's lives you'll find worksheets and crafts on ice-cream and ice because ice-cream is so much more fun to do!

But that's really confusing to say that the letter i makes the sound as in igloo and then do a craft for ice-cream.

And that is the dilemma that I faced. I opted for an igloo craft and sang the song 'Ichy insects, i, i, i. Inchy insects i, i, i, Ichy insects i, i, i. 'i' is the sound of i.' We used the hand movement of pretending to scratch ourselves because of the ichy insects as we sang.

Igloo Craft

1. Download igloo. Choose here.

2. Children colour the igloo, cut out and glue onto a blue sheet of paper.

3. Have children write the letter i along the top or bottom of the blue paper.

3. Using a cotton tip dipped into white paint, children make dots of snow all around.

Letter i painting

The other option for a craft that the children did was to paint this sheet with the letter i and a picture of an igloo and insects. Download it here. 

PS. Here's an interesting fact for those who choose to do the igloo craft.

You cannot find penguins with igloos. Often I would see igloo crafts with penguins outside. Now penguins can only be found in Antartica which is in the Southern Hemisphere and igloos are used by people in the Northern Hemiphere. I'm nitpicking here but children will grow up thinking you can find penguins in the northern hemisphere.

Like I said, the letter i is such a hard letter to find appropriate crafts!

If you're looking for some phonics activities try this book (affiliate link). I have this book, I use a combination of books.