I’m working on the letter F with my preschooler and a couple of her friends. F is a fun letter to work on with these kids. F stands for flowers, fish, farmer, force, and fruit. So, for this week, we’ve done some really fun activities featuring the letter F. This post will feature three letter F preschool activities: F is for Fish, F is for Fruit, and F is for Flowers.

Activity One: F is for Fish

Objective One: Help children identify the letter F and begin to understand the letter formation of the letter F.
Objective Two: Help children develop the fine motor skills preparatory to writing.

Materials:
This activity requires:

1 F is for fish worksheet per child. Click here for the free printable.
1 glue stick
1 set of paint chips (three colors that coordinate) that have been cut into small triangles.

Process:
First, have the children trace the letters with their fingers using proper letter formation. Have them trace both the uppercase and lowercase letters. This will help their minds begin to understand how the letter F is formed.

Now, have the children use the triangular shaped paint chips to fill in the letter outlines on the page. Once they have finished that, they can also fill in the fish if they want and there is still time. Take this time to talk to the children about what sound the letter makes. Also, adding in tidbits about fish, such as how their overlapping scales work, will make the activity more interesting to the children.

Activity Two: F is for Fruit

Objective One:  Help children discover fruit using their other senses.

Materials:
Several different whole fruits concealed in bowls or paper bags.
Blind fold

Process:
Set the fruit out in separate bowls (or inside paper bags) away from where the children are gathered. We used apples, bananas, pears, grapes, strawberries, oranges.

Next, select one child, and blindfold that child and carefully lead the child over to the fruit. Tell the child that he or she is looking for a specific fruit. Help the child carefully handle, and smell each fruit. After each fruit ask the child if it’s the fruit that he or she was searching for. Continue until all the fruits have been handled. Talk about how the fruit felt and smelled.

As a follow up to the activity, offer fresh fruit as the snack for the children, and talk about how the fruit tastes and smells.

Activity Three: F is for Flowers

Objective One: Help children build their fine motor skills.

Materials:
Several different colors of scrap book paper or construction paper cut to a 4 inch x 4 inch square, and then cut with different edge designs. We ended up with four different edge designs for the children to use.
1 Pipe cleaner for each child
1 bamboo skewer for each child

Process:
Have the children select a paper from each of the different designs.

Next, have the children fold each paper in half. Have them fold the paper in half again, and then one more time on the diagonal.

Now, have the children unfold the folded papers and carefully poke the bamboo skewer through the centers of each paper.

Next, have the children thread the papers onto the pipe cleaners. Make sure the color side of the paper is up. Fold the top of the pipe cleaner over to make a little ball. This will help the secure the flower petals.

Finally, have the children scrunch the paper around the little ball of pipe cleaner one more time. This will add dimension to the flowers. Then fluff the petals out again and wrap the remaining pipe cleaner around the bamboo skewer.

My kids had a great time working on the flowers. They loved the way they turned out. One little girl liked her flower so much she didn’t want to give it to her Mom. These are the first three activities in this unit. Look for F is for Force and F is for Farmer to be published soon. These activities were a fun way to explore the letter F. We still have two more to finish in this unit. F is for Force is a science exploration, and F is for Farmer is a circle time experience.