We’ve had a lot of fun working through the alphabet so far, and I hope you’ve enjoyed following along! This past week we focused on activities for the letter D. It was another one of those weeks where I had to pick between so many possibilities because there are tons of fun D words!
We are down to the final 10 days before baby boy is expected to make his arrival 🙂 I will hopefully be able to keep up with our weekly activities, but if there’s a break– that’s why! I’m trying to prepare our preschool plans ahead of time, but we shall see how productive I end up being lol.
Here are our activities for the letter D:
What starts with the letter D?
This has turned into a weekly staple for us since it’s really a great way to start and close out the week. Either write out or use the printable D below, and see how many words they can come up with that start with D.
Let them try to come up with ideas with only a prompt of hearing the /d/ sound at first. No worries if they don’t have a ton of ideas, you can give some suggestions so they have a good list. Later in the week when you try the activity again, they will likely be able to come up with more on their own!
D is for Donut
Don’t mind this pregnant mama over here always thinking about food 🙂 But seriously, this was such a cute craft that Lu loved to make! And really quite simple too.
Draw a letter D in cardboard and cut it out. If you only have brown construction paper, that works fine too! We just used an empty cereal box haha, and it will make the D more sturdy.
Take a handful of cotton balls and let the kids stretch them all out. Leaving a decent amount of space around the edges for the brown to show, cover the inner area with liquid glue. Then the kids can spread the cotton ball pieces all over to make “frosting”!
To a 4-year-old, any decent dessert has sprinkles, right? So let’s add some of those to our donut! I put little dabs of the liquid glue all over again and let the kids put real sprinkles on. They may have snuck a taste several times… and I think our verdict is that sprinkles taste decidedly better *without* glue LOL!
If you don’t have real sprinkles on hand or would rather save them for an actual dessert, just use little pieces of construction paper! Using a paper-cutter would make it go faster, but you could also just have the kids rip pieces up. If your kids are anything like mine, ripping paper is almost as exciting as eating sprinkles anyway.
Playtime: Duck, Duck, Goose
This childhood classic is the perfect game for letter D week! We played Duck, Duck, Goose forever and the kids loved it. Whenever it was my turn, I would always pronounce it “d-d-d-duck” to emphasize the d sound.
Dump Truck of D’s
A fun printable to search for the big and little D’s! This silly worksheet has a dump truck that dumped out a pile of dirt with a bunch of letters in it. Kiddos have to “dig” the D’s out by circling them. A great way to differentiate them from other letters!
Snack Time: Dirt Pudding Cups
Dirt pudding is such a fun snack for little ones. Just fill a cup with alternating layers of crushed Oreos and chocolate pudding. Then stick a gummy worm in and watch your kids get suuuuper excited at the idea of eating dirt and worms.
D is for Dream Catcher
Our second D craft for the week was one of my favs! We made quick and easy little dream catchers using paper plates and yarn. If you want to make a more decorative one, you can find instructions on that here. Otherwise, paper plate dream catchers worked perfectly as one of our activities for letter D!
Take a paper plate and cut a circle out of the center, leaving about 2 inches for the outer circle. Then draw and cut out a D from the inner circle. Your kiddo can then color the outer circle and D however they’d like!
Line both the outer circle and D with holes from a hole puncher, or just stab holes with a pen or something lol. Then, let your preschooler weave the yarn in and out between the circle and the D until it goes all the way around.
Once the D is securely hanging in the middle, put a few holes along the bottom of the outer circle. Using ribbon, more yarn, string, or anything else that inspires you, let the kids hang something through the holes. Voila, your Dream catcher is complete!
Pretend Play: Doggies Digging in the Dirt
Somehow dirt has seemed to be the most popular D word for us this week haha. But my kids love pretending to be animals, so I used this opportunity to let them pretend to be Dogs. They loved walking around on their hands and knees, woofing, and pretending to dig. If it was warmer out I’d probably have let them dig a bit in the yard, so we may revisit it again this summer!
Doctor: Let’s Play Operation
This printable activity is based on the game Operation. In the pack below you’ll find one page that has a “patient” and another with big and little D’s in different shapes. Cut out the shapes and let your little one match the shape to one on the patient.
This is a great way to work on both shape recognition as well as the letter D. To make it a little more like the real game, I let Lulu use some tweezers to place the shapes down. She really loved playing Doctor for this one!
Story Time: How Do Dinosaurs Count to Ten
For story time this week, one of the books we read were about Dinosaurs! This book is a classic and one my kids ask to read often, so it worked perfectly as one of our activities for the letter D this week.
We read How Do Dinosaurs Count to Ten by Jane Yolen (affiliate link), which not only highlighted the letter D for dinosaurs, but also works on counting as well! It’s a fun book that your kiddos will love to read over and over.
Color in the D words
For this one I made a printable that shows a big Dish with pictures on it. Some of the pictures are of words that start with D, but a couple are not! See if your kiddos can figure them out on their own by coloring in the pictures that do start with D.
Get your Letter D printable pack here!
That’s a wrap for another alphabet week! These activities for the letter D were so easy and Lulu really enjoyed them. It’s funny how as a parent your tendency is to think your own child is so smart, but it still feels amazing to see how well they pick stuff up, you know? I love experiencing this learning process with her and can’t wait to continue as she grows!
In case you missed last week’s, head on back to my post on Letter C. Or you can start right from the beginning with Letter A!
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Love this. Very entertaining especially for the little ones.
This is wonderful material to teach preschoolers! Printed the letter D activities, signed up for your emails so I can continue to offer these activities to my children. Thank you for being so creative and helping along other homeschool preschool moms! All the best to you on your motherhood and teacher journey!